Dr Natasa Lackovic

Senior Lecturer

Research Overview

Nataša's research investigates how emerging technologies and communication media — including diverse visual and multimodal artefacts, digital platforms, and generative AI — are transforming knowledge, learning, and practices in education and society.

She is an educational scientist and philosopher, innovator, semiotician, and international leader in visual and multimodal approahes and methods in higher education.

Nataša's work broadly explores the following "grand challenges":

How are images, generative AI and multimodal communication transforming knowledge and learning?
How can the development and application of different types of contemporary literacies (critical media/sustainability/postdigital/mental health) and creative practices bring about social, technological, epistemic and environmental change?
How can visual, arts-based and narrative methods and approaches help communities understand and communicate lived experiences of mental health, inequality, relationships, and belonging?

Her research programme contributes to building future knowledge ecosystems through multimodal and relational turn in higher education and society, built on the following shifts and expansions:

From verbal texts to multimodal, arts and AI-driven media;
From individual to relational knowledge and practices.

In particular, Dr Lacković has been developing relational and sociomaterial practices, critical methods and theoretical perspectives to bridging persistent dualisms in education and society, such as "image-concept", "concrete-abstract", "us-them" and "mind-body" in tackling pressing social, representational, and environmental crises. Within this body of work, her controbutions include a number of novel concepts and approaches, such as: inquiry graphics (educational artefacts/pedagogy/research method), threshold graphics, multimodal inquiry, Identity + (a new approach to identity), PSC (production-signifciation-consumption) method, relational HEIs, postdigital semiotics, postdigital signs/living/bubbles, concepts-on-the-continuum, and more.

Two recent monographs (Inquiry Graphics in Higher Education, 2020, Palgrave McMillan) and (Relational and Multimodal Higher Education, co-written with A. Olteanu, 2024, Routledge) present holistic outcomes of the above mentioned developments.

Professional Role

I am a Senior Fellow of Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

In my research, 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 co-Director of the Centre for Social Futures, Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FASS)

Current Teaching

PhD module Leader: I teach on the online Doctoral Programme in Higher Education Research, Evaluation and Enhancement (HEREE) and I lead the module ED.S842: "Enhancing Learning Teaching and Assessment".
PhD Programme Leader - Doctoral Programme in Educational Research.

External Roles

Co-founder, BASA - British Association for Semiotic Advancement
Editorial Board, the Postdigital Science and Education journal, Springer.
Executive Committee (rep. Great Britain): International Association of Semioitc Studies (IASS)
External Advisor, International Association of Visual Pedagogies
Research Associate, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade
International Conference Committee ("Why Still Education?" International Confernece)
EERA (European Educational Research Association) Network 15 co-convenor

Web Links

Designer, co-ordinator, leader 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.

PhD Supervisions Completed

Experienced doctoral thesis supervisor, over 20 PhD theses supervised to completion, with nearly 60 current and former PhD students.

Career Details

I have had more than 17 years of experience working in the field of Education and lifelong learning, and more than 10 years working in the field of Higher Education.

I began HE 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 Fellowship.

I was a European Council Erasmus Mundus Fellow at the UCL/Institute of Education, London (UK), where I graduated from an international MA degree in Lifelong Learning: Policy and Management in 2010.

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in supervising students whose interests relate to my work in visual, material and digital culture/research/pedagogy, multimodality, semiotics in education, socio-materiality, social justice/critical theory and critical media literacy. Other areas of interest include critical approachers to graduate employability, teaching-learning designs, student empowerment, art-based methods and post-truth/humanism/digital.