Mirka Martel is IIE’s head of Research, Evaluation & Learning (REL) and has been with IIE since 2012. She manages research and evaluation projects in international education, leadership, and development. Her oversight of key resources in the international education field, including the historic Open Doors report on international educational exchange and the Project Atlas research initiative on global student mobility, advance the field and provide strategic insight into the future of academic mobility flows in the United States and worldwide.

Martel specializes in quantitative and qualitative evaluation of international education programs, with a specific interest in higher education exchange and leadership. She is project director of the 10-year Alumni Tracking Study of the Ford Foundation’s International Fellowships Program (IFP), an unprecedented study measuring the impact of international scholarship on emerging social justice leaders from marginalized communities. Martel recently published a chapter on measuring the impact of international exchange in International Scholarships in Higher Education: Pathways to Social Change (Palgrave, 2018).

Martel is active in the American Evaluation Association (AEA) and the Comparative International Education Society (CIES). She holds a master’s in international affairs from Columbia University and a doctorate in international and comparative education from Teachers College, Columbia University.