Will holds a Ph.D. in Comparative and International Education from the University of Hong Kong. He is an Associate Professor in Comparative and International Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra. He is also an Adjunct Researcher at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University (Tokyo, Japan) and an Honorary Adjunct Professor at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (Cambodia). He supports various international organizations, such as the World Bank and UNESCO, on education-related projects and research. 

Will is also known for the podcast he created and hosts called FreshEd. The podcast focuses on new educational research and is a valuable teaching resource used in over 100 universities, reaching an audience in over 180 countries. Episodes have been downloaded almost 1 million times.

Will’s early research focused on Cambodia, examining social injustice and educational inequality linked to private supplementary tutoring. He analysed how cultural norms and 1990s development efforts combined to make private tutoring both necessary and socially accepted, despite reinforcing inequality. This research is pulled together in his award-winning book entitled Cambodia for Sale (2021, Routledge). Will’s research shifted to a comparative focus on how the present shapes interpretations of history. He examined the development of regional identity through education systems in five Mekong sub-region countries, focusing on struggles between regional and national narratives in history curriculum design at the regional level inside UNESCO Bangkok and at the national level inside five ministries of education.

This work was pulled together in a co-edited collection published by Teachers College Press entitled Memory in the Mekong (2022). He continued this thread of work by co-editing the book Education and Power in Southeast Asia (Routledge, 2023).