I am Lecturer in Higher Education and my research interests broadly concern higher education policy and governance, the political economy of higher education and the digital economy.

I am interested in the diversity and complexity of markets in and around universities, including the variety of actors that have entered the sector, their strategies, ways of working, and consequences for higher education and societies at large. I have developed a heuristic of the global higher education industry with four types of markets based on two dimensions. The first dimension is whether universities are sellers or buyers of things and services; while the second dimension is whether actors sell things and services for immediate profit/surplus or not. I am focused on market-making processes and the role of market devices.

I am also interested in the platform capitalism and platformization of universities. I am examining how digital platforms are tools for market expansion in the higher education sector and the effects that they have on the sector and its actors. I continue to nourish my interest in higher education policy. Particularly I am following the higher education multi-level and multi-actor governance reforms.

I am Co-Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation at Lancaster University. I am also part of the Centre for Global Higher Education – a research partnership of international universities and based at the UCL Institute of Education. I am an external member of the Culture, Politics and Global Justice research cluster based at the University of Cambridge. Besides my academic work, I am still involved in the higher education policy and practice at the European level; and particularly in quality assurance. I am a member of the Council of the Magna Charta Observatory, an evaluator of national quality assurance agencies for ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education), and a member of the Appeals Committee for the EQAR (The European Quality Assurance Register for Higher Education).

I am interested in research proposals that investigate the higher education sector in relation to: policy and governance, market-making and industry construction, privatization, quality assurance and evaluation, datafication and digitalisation of governance, platformization, social media, globalisation, global trade agreements, digital economy, and knowledge economy.

Module Convenor of ED.S843 Researching Higher Education in the Doctoral Programme in Higher Education: Research, Evaluation and Enhancement

Module Co-Convenor of ED.S853 Evaluating the implementation of Social Justice Programmes in the Doctoral Programme in Education and Social Justice

Before coming to Lancaster University, I was Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Bristol. Before my academic career, I have been working in higher education policy and practice since 2003 at institutional and national levels in Slovenia, and at the international level in Europe.