Ngaire Woods is the founding and inaugural Dean of Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. She also founded, and co-directs with Professor Robert O. Keohane, Princeton University, the Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellowship Programme; previously she also founded and directed the Global Economic Governance Programme which was established in 2003 to conduct research into how global economic institutions could better meet the needs of people in developing countries.
Ngaire Woods has a particular interest in the governance of global institutions aimed at promoting global economic prosperity, development and stability, and has addressed governments around the world on these issues. She is currently Vice-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Meta-Council on Global Governance and project leader of a report on leadership in international institutions. In 2012 she co-authored a study for the President of the African Development Bank of his clients’ views of the institutions. She is currently helping the African Development Bank strengthen its impact on gender equality, both within the Bank and across its programming. Ngaire Woods has served as an Advisor to the IMF Board, to the UNDP’s Human Development Report, and to the Commonwealth Heads of Government. She also sits as a Non-Executive Director on the Board of ARUP, a global engineering and design company, and as a member of the Operating and Advisory Board of the Center for International Governance Innovation.
Ngaire Woods has published widely, her publications include 'The Politics of Global Regulation' (with Walter Mattli); 'Networks of Influence', and 'The Globalizers: The IMF, the World Bank and their Borrowers'.
She was educated at Auckland University (BA in economics, LLB Hons in law) before studying at Balliol College, Oxford (as a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar), completing an MPhil (with Distinction) and then DPhil (in 1992) in International Relations.