Dr Janja Komljenovic

Senior Lecturer

Research Overview

My research focuses on the political economy of higher education. I am particularly interested in digital markets in higher education, new forms of value in EdTech, and how things are turned into assets. I lead an ESRC-funded research project, 'Universities and Unicorns: building digital assets in the higher education industry'. My approach sits at the intersection of economic sociology, science and technology studies, and higher education research. I have widely published on higher education policy and governance, and higher education markets.

Profile

I am a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University researching higher education markets, higher education governance and digital asset-making. I have also been working in higher education policy since 2003 at institutional, national, and European levels. I am still active in higher education quality assurance acting as an evaluator of national quality assurance agencies, and as a consultant on international policy projects.

My current research follows three main themes:

Assetisation and new forms of economic value in digital higher education
Platformisation and datafication of post-secondary knowledge production and dissemination
Socio-technical imaginaries and their role in performing the future

I lead an ESRC-funded research project 'Universities and Unicorns: building digital assets in the higher education industry’. The project includes an international and interdisciplinary research team. We investigate new forms of value creation through the construction of digital assets. We follow three main groups of actors: universities, EdTech companies, and investors in EdTech. We aim to propose policy guidelines on governing digital assets in higher education.

I am the Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation at Lancaster University. I am also a Research Management Committee member of the Centre for Global Higher Education – a research partnership of international universities and based at Oxford University and UCL. Besides my academic work, I am still involved in the higher education policy and practice at the European level. I am 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 act as a consultant on various international higher education policy projects.

Current Teaching

Module Convenor of Understanding policies and practices in higher education in the Doctoral Programme in Educational Research - Higher Education.

Career Details

I joined Lancaster University in 2016, having previously been a Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Bristol. I have also worked as an Advisor to the Slovenian Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology, and as Head of Strategy and Quality at the University of Ljubljana. I have participated in European-level policy-making on higher education reforms and quality assurance via the E4 Group, Bologna Follow Up Group, and EQAR General Assembly.

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in research proposals that investigate the higher education sector in relation to: digitalisation, platformisation and datafication, assetisation, policy and governance, market-making and industry construction, privatisation, quality assurance and evaluation, digital economy, and knowledge economy.