BERA Dissertation Award to 2015 DPhil graduate
Dr Sanja Djerasimovic has been awarded the second prize in the BERA Dissertation Awards for her DPhil thesis on the “Formation of the civic education policy as a discursive project in post-2000 Serbia” (Supervisors: Professor Alis Oancea and Professor Ingrid Lunt, awarded 2015).
In her thesis, Dr Djerasimovic examines the making of an education policy in a system undergoing a substantial political and socio-economic transition, and uses this as a point of departure for the exploration of the possibilities for analysing education policies as discursive projects of elites. Her approach combines policy sociology with the study of post-communist education reform, as the thesis attempts to create a multi-faceted contribution to education research, on substantive, theoretical, and methodological levels.
After submitting her thesis for examination, Dr Djerasimovic was a researcher in the Department, on a study that explored conceptualisations of research impact in the UK higher education sector (PI: Prof Alis Oancea). Subsequently, she became Impact Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, where she is currently working on multiple projects and helping develop the societal impact of Humanities research. Over the past year, she has also served as an academic assessor on the FCO-funded Chevening Scholarship programme, as well as a Vice-Chair on an EC Horizon2020 call. Her recent publications include ‘Examining the Discourses of Cross-Cultural Communication in Transnational Higher Education: From Imposition to Transformation’ in the Journal for Education and Teaching.