Mrs Jane Doka

Dr. Jane Doka is a skilled researcher with expertise in Comparative and International Education, specializing in the areas of youth transitions, inclusion, and gender within educational contexts. Her work emphasises the nuanced experiences of adolescents, particularly girls/young women characterised as marginalised within development frameworks, with an extensive background in both applied research and practical project implementation in the Global South. Her current and past projects underscore her commitment to ethical, culturally responsive research and the development of inclusive education systems. Jane is a member of the Centre for the Study of Global Development (CSGD) and is part of the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (open.ac.uk)

For her PhD, Jane explored the agency and educational trajectories of adolescent girls considered marginalised in development programmess, using Zimbabwe as a case study. Her doctoral work was funded by the UK's Foreign Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO) Girls Education Challenge (GEC), specifically under World Vision's Improving Gender Attitudes,Transtions and Education  (IGATE-T) project in Zimbabwe. She has two peer-reviewed papers drawn from this research currently under review, expected to contribute valuable insights to the fields of gender and education in international development.

Jane's research experise is further demonstrated in her pfrofessional consultancy roles. As a consultant for the Supporting Adolescent Girls' Education (SAGE) project at The Open University, she adapted and translated community educator handbooks for implementation in Zimbabwe, ensuring bothcultural sensitivity and ethical integrity in the content. As a key contributor to the Reaching out to Marginalised populations in Low-Income Countries (ReMaLIC) project, she developed a detailed coding framework using Nvivo software, achieving high standards of inter-coder reliability to meet funders' rigorous data validation requirements. 

Currently, Jane is a co-Principal Investigator (Post-Doctoral Research Associate) for the Open Societal Challenges-funded OpenSTEM Africa Tertiary Project at the Open University. In this role,she collaborates with partners in Ghana and Kenya on strategies for increasing retention of female STEM students in tertiary education. Her responsibilities include co-designing research methodologies, preparing ethical protocols, leading in conducting literature reviews, contributing to bid-development, and drafting high-impact research outputs. Jane is also a research assistant for the Power of Parents (POP) project, funded by Mc2H, where she co-leads the drafting and editing of critical research outputs.

Jane is an affiliate of the Britsh Zimbabwe Society (BZS) and the Faculty of Education at the University of Zimbabwe.