Fellowship: UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) Fellowship
Location: UNESCO-IIEP, Paris, France | OECD Centre for Skills, Paris, France
Dates: October 2025
Key Meetings:
- Suguru Mizunoya, Chief of Technical Cooperation, UNESCO-IIEP (7 October 2025)
- Dr. Martín Benavides, Director, UNESCO-IIEP & Former Minister of Education, Peru (15 October 2025)
- Dr. Ricardo Espinoza, OECD Economist & Skill Strategy Leader, OECD Centre for Skills
Category: News / UNESCO Fellowship, International Education Planning & Skills Policy
Overview
In October 2025, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jomphong Mongkhonvanit — Vice President and Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Siam University — commenced a prestigious UNESCO-IIEP Fellowship at the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) in Paris, France. Marking the start of the fellowship, Dr. Jomphong met with senior IIEP leadership and key international education experts — engagements that position him at the very centre of global education planning and skills policy development.
The fellowship represents a significant honour and a significant responsibility: UNESCO-IIEP fellowships are awarded to education leaders with the demonstrated capacity to contribute to and benefit from engagement with the world’s foremost institute dedicated to educational planning, management, and policy.
7 October 2025: Fresh Start — Meetings with UNESCO-IIEP Leadership Team
On 7 October 2025, Dr. Jomphong marked the “fresh start” of his UNESCO-IIEP fellowship with inaugural meetings at IIEP’s Paris headquarters with:
- Suguru Mizunoya — Technical Cooperation Team Leader, UNESCO-IIEP, and Columbia University SIPA alumnus
- The Chief of Knowledge Generation & Mobilization and their respective teams
These opening engagements set the intellectual and collaborative foundation for the fellowship — connecting Dr. Jomphong directly with the two core pillars of IIEP’s work: its Technical Cooperation function, which supports governments in developing national education plans and building institutional capacity; and its Knowledge Generation & Mobilization function, which produces and disseminates the research and evidence that informs education policy worldwide.
The long-standing connection between Dr. Jomphong and Suguru Mizunoya — both Columbia SIPA alumni — gave these inaugural meetings an added depth, grounded in a shared intellectual tradition and mutual understanding of international development challenges.
15 October 2025: Consultation with the Director of UNESCO-IIEP
On 15 October 2025, Dr. Jomphong held a “great meeting and consultation” with Dr. Martín Benavides — Director of UNESCO-IIEP and former Minister of Education of Peru.
Dr. Benavides is one of the most distinguished figures in global education leadership. A Peruvian sociologist by training, he served as Peru’s Minister of Education at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (February–November 2020), designing the country’s national distance education strategy and overseeing all levels of the education system — from pre-primary through higher education — under the extraordinary pressures of the pandemic. Prior to that, he led the reform of Peru’s higher education regulatory system as head of the National Superintendence of Higher University Education (SUNEDU), and served as Executive Director of GRADE (Group for the Analysis of Development), Peru’s leading education think tank.
As IIEP Director since March 2023, Dr. Benavides provides strategic leadership for an institution that has supported UNESCO Member States in educational planning for over six decades, with offices in Paris, Buenos Aires, and Dakar. Under his leadership, IIEP has also deepened its partnership with the OECD, signing a Memorandum of Understanding in 2024 to enhance joint research, knowledge-sharing, and capacity development across a wider range of countries.
A meeting with the Director of UNESCO-IIEP at this level signals the seriousness with which Dr. Jomphong’s fellowship is being taken — and the institutional intent to make it a substantive, productive engagement rather than a ceremonial one.
OECD Centre for Skills: Consultation with Dr. Ricardo Espinoza
During his Paris engagement, Dr. Jomphong also held a “fruitful consultation and meeting” with Dr. Ricardo Espinoza — OECD Economist and Skill Strategy Leader at the OECD Centre for Skills.
The OECD Centre for Skills is the primary body within the OECD responsible for providing countries with analytical tools, comparative data, and strategic frameworks for skills development — including the widely-used OECD Skills Strategy approach, which has been adopted by numerous countries including Thailand as a framework for diagnosing skills gaps and designing systemic responses.
Dr. Espinoza’s role as Skill Strategy Leader makes him one of the most operationally central figures in the OECD’s work on skills policy reform. A consultation with him — alongside the UNESCO-IIEP engagements — means that Dr. Jomphong’s Paris mission covered both the educational planning dimension (UNESCO-IIEP) and the skills economics and strategy dimension (OECD) of the human capital development agenda.
The UNESCO-IIEP Fellowship: What It Means
A UNESCO-IIEP fellowship is not a routine study visit. It is a structured opportunity for education practitioners and leaders to deepen their understanding of educational planning methodology, engage with cutting-edge research, contribute to the institute’s intellectual community, and build the international networks that allow ideas to travel from global institutions to national systems — and back.
For Dr. Jomphong — who holds responsibilities spanning higher education leadership, national cybersecurity governance, vocational education advocacy, and international academic diplomacy — the fellowship provides a rare focused opportunity to ground his extensive practical experience in the most rigorous global frameworks for education system analysis, planning, and reform.
The fellowship also carries implications for Thailand. The insights, relationships, and frameworks developed through IIEP engagement have direct relevance for Thailand’s education planning challenges — from skills mismatches and TVET reform to the integration of AI in education and the preparation of an ageing workforce for lifelong learning.
Key Takeaways
- Dr. Jomphong Mongkhonvanit’s UNESCO-IIEP Fellowship in Paris marks a significant milestone in his international academic and policy engagement — placing him within the world’s premier institution for educational planning
- Meetings with UNESCO-IIEP Director Dr. Martín Benavides, Technical Cooperation Chief Suguru Mizunoya, and OECD Skill Strategy Leader Dr. Ricardo Espinoza represent engagement at the highest levels of the global education and skills policy architecture
- The fellowship connects Siam University directly to UNESCO-IIEP’s networks, methodologies, and knowledge base — with direct implications for how the institution contributes to Thailand’s education and skills reform agenda
- The triangulation of UNESCO-IIEP (education planning), OECD (skills strategy), and AIIB/World Bank (development finance) that Dr. Jomphong’s October 2025 missions represent reflects a coherent, strategic engagement with the full landscape of international institutions shaping education and human capital policy in Asia
- For Thailand and the broader ASEAN region, having senior academic and policy leaders embedded in UNESCO-IIEP fellowship programmes ensures that regional perspectives inform global frameworks — and that global best practice reaches national reform efforts
UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), Paris, France. For more information on IIEP, visit [iiep.unesco.org](https://www.iiep.unesco.org). For more information on the OECD Centre for Skills, visit [oecd.org/skills](https://www.oecd.org/skills).