Bilal Barakat is a researcher affiliated with the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIAS). He is an academic researcher and consultant with a portfolio of expertise in various aspects of education statistics and policy, especially at the intersection of education and demography. Having originally trained as a mathematician at the University of Cambridge, he subsequently obtained his doctorate at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education. His main research interests and areas of expertise include substantive and methodological issues in educational statistics and policy modelling, especially from a demographic perspective. His research has been published in leading international journals and informed major international reports.