Alexander Leicht

Alexander Leicht is Chief of the Section of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) at UNESCO. Before joining UNESCO, he was Head of the German Secretariat for the UN Decade of ESD at the German Commission for UNESCO from 2004 to 2011. He also worked three years as a university teacher in Hungary and the United Kingdom and was originally trained as a teacher at the University of Marburg, Germany, and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA.

He holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. As Chief of the Section of ESD, his current priorities include launching and implementing the new UNESCO framework ‘ESD for 2030’, which aims at mobilizing ESD to make progress towards all 17 Sustainable Development Goals. In addition, his portfolio includes the global monitoring of Target 4.7 of Sustainable Development Goal 4 on Education. From 2016-2018, he also led UNESCO’s work on Global Citizenship Education, in addition to ESD, and in 2018 spent three months as Officer-in-charge of the UNESCO Office in Tehran. He has published on ESD, sustainable development, Global Citizenship Education, cultural policy, and American Studies.