My research interest broadly tackles educational futures as linked to challenges and complexities of material, digital and social futures, via interdisciplinary approaches and theories. These incorporate concerns for social justice; visual and arts based research and pedagogy (photographs, sketching and graphic narratives), socio-materiality; (digital) semiotics and a semiotic theory of learning; multimodality, critical thinking and critical media literacy; student/staff wellbeing and mental health. I am particularly interested in methods development and innovation, and exploring a relational ontology in theory and practice at the nexus of “the society (cultural and ideological production and impact) - material artefacts - digital technology - ecology”. My scholarship also includes critical approaches to graduate employability and identity, the postdigital, posthuman, and post-truth.
I am interested in supervising students whose interests relate to visual, material and digital culture/research/pedagogy, multimodality, semiotics in education, socio-materiality, social justice/critical theory and critical media literacy. Areas of interest include critical approachers to graduate employability, teaching-learning designs, student empowerment, art-based methods and post-truth/humanism/digital.
I am working on advancing our understanding of the role of embodiment, materiality (in both physical and digital representation form), images, art and artefacts in education and society. Passionate about matters of social justice, innovation, interdisciplinarity and relational ontology.
At Lancaster University, I am currently:
• a Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation (CHERE),
• a Director of Lancaster University interdisciplinary hub “ReOPeN”
• on the FASS (Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences)-LUMS Ethics Committee
• Departmental Engagement Lead and Engagement Committee member
• a Departmental Ethics Director
• a member of the Centre for Technology Enhanced Learning and the Centre for Social Justice and Wellbeing in Education
Designer, co-ordinator and copy right owner of the Lancaster University's interdisciplinary hub GNC ReOPeN web page, Graphic Novels and Comics Research, Outreach, Pedagogy (and Engagement) Network.
Experienced doctoral thesis supervisor.
Completed: PhDProject title: Exploring the Factors Affecting an Adoption of E-Assessments Among The CIS Programmes in a Higher Education Institution in the Middle East (HEIME)
Completed: PhD
Project title: Exploring the Challenges of Managing Blended Learning Courses in Selected Irish Higher Education Institutes: An Activity Theory Study
Completed: PhD
Project title: Shaping Up for Success: A Qualitative Case Study on the Impact of Using Interactive Radar Graphs on Workplace-Based Assessment Practices for Pharmacy Interns in Ireland
Completed: PhD
Project title: From Disorientation to Reintegration: an Exploratory Investigation of Mature Students’ Engagement in Transformative Learning
Completed: PhD
Project title: A Bernsteinian Analysis of the Interplay Between Legal Knowledge and the Legal Professional In University Law Schools in Yorkshire and Alberta: Rule of Law or Rule of Lawyers
Completed: PhD
Project title: From Design to Practice: Teachers' Experience and Perspectives of Blended Professional Development in Hong Kong
Completed: PhD
Project title: Mediating multimedia artefacts and teaching-learning experiences relating to Summative Assessment Feedback (SAF) and student overall satisfaction
Completed: PhD
Project title: Expanding the paradigm of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: multimodality and semiotics of teaching-learning interactions in an undergraduate Accounting programme
Completed: PhD
Project title: Lessons in Dynamics and Distractions: Social Media and Gulf-Arab Women’s Empowerment
I have had more than 17 years of experience working in the field of Education, and more than 10 years working in the field of Higher Education.
I began work as Lecturer at Lancaster University in September 2014. Prior to that, I worked at the University of Nottingham as doctoral researcher (PhD) and Research Assistant/Fellow, where I completed my PhD in 2014, having been awarded a Visual Learning Lab and the Learning Sciences Research Institute scholarship.
I was a European Council Erasmus Mundus Scholar at the UCL/Institute of Education, London (UK), where i obtained an international MA degree in Lifelong Learning: Policy and Management in 2010.
At Nottingham, I was also working as Teaching Assistant for a master's degree module in Educational Psychology, and won a university's Teaching Assistant award in 2011, as well as an award for my contributions as a postgraduate researcher to the field of Education (a UoN Endowed Postgraduate Award 2011/2012).
I began my career as an English teacher, having completed a BA in English Studies at the University of Belgrade.