Rizka Suhani, a PhD candidate at Adelaide University in the School of Education

Rizka's research spans two interconnected areas of education policy inquiry. Her doctoral project examines private education financing networks in Asia, using the Invest-ED database alongside large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) to analyse financing patterns across the region at scale. A central component of this work involves developing an open-source, LLM-assisted analytical tool to support non-technical researchers and policymakers in engaging with complex education finance data, aiming to contribute practically to the capacity of civil society and policy actors to interrogate these systems.

Her Master's research brought a different but complementary critical lens to curriculum policy, investigating how traditional and local knowledge systems have been represented, positioned, and valued in Indonesian national curriculum policy over a twenty-year period (2004–2024). Drawing on epistemic justice, decolonial epistemology, and epistemic humility frameworks, the study critically examined how colonial hierarchies of knowledge have persisted, and at times been disrupted, across four curriculum cycles: KBK, KTSP, K-13, and Kurikulum Merdeka. The analysis was grounded in critical document analysis of 55 primary documents spanning national laws, ministerial regulations, curriculum frameworks, and subject syllabuses and textbooks.

Taken together, her research reflects a sustained commitment to understanding how power shapes knowledge and access in education systems, whether through the financing structures that drive privatisation across Asia, or through the epistemological choices embedded in national curriculum design.

Research Interests: private education financing; education privatisation; LLMs and NLP in education policy research; epistemic justice; curriculum policy; decolonial approaches to education; Asia-Pacific education systems