Dr. Despina Karamperidou is the Head of the Education Section at UNICEF Greece. Before this role, she served as an Education Specialist at the UNICEF Innocenti Global Office of Research and Foresight in Florence, Italy. There, she supported Ministries of Education across sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and Latin America in enhancing teacher management and training systems, and in gathering evidence for foundational learning programmes. Prior to her time at UNICEF, Despina managed projects on migration and state capacity at the Robert Schuman Research Center for Advanced Studies, and conducted research fellowships on political violence, conflict, and the political economy of civil wars at Yale University (New Haven, USA) and the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the European University Institute (EUI) and Master’s degrees from the EUI (M.Res. Political Science), the University of Bristol (M.Sc. Economics), and the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki (MA Politics and Economics of Eastern and South Eastern Europe).