Dr Katya Pechenkina

Biography

Dr. Pechenkina is a cultural anthropologist, education researcher, and award-winning lecturer. She has completed an undergraduate degree in social anthropology with honours from Saratov State Technical University, which included a year abroad as an International Research and Exchange Board fellow at the California State University Bakersfield, where she majored in sociology. Dr. Pechenkina’s other degrees are Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (HE) from Swinburne University of Technology, and a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Melbourne. Dr. Pechenkina’s PhD studies investigated the notions of academic success among Indigenous Australian students. In addition to Indigenous education and critical race theory, her current research interests include scholarship of teaching and learning, educational technology, and creative writing. 

Dr. Pechenkina is responsible for a range of strategic teaching and learning initiatives in the areas of educational innovation, scholarship of teaching and learning, impact and evaluation of teaching, as well as online learning and professional development for academic teaching staff. She has designed and conducted institution-based, national, international and interdisciplinary research projects involving higher education lecturers and students, international and Indigenous learners, as well as with schools and various marginalised communities. Her methodological expertise comprises qualitative and quantitative as well as mixed approaches; she is particularly skilled in ethnographic methods of inquiry.

Dr. Pechenkina convenes three units of study, which focus on scholarly teaching, evaluation of teaching’s impact, online learning and communication, and inclusive learning and teaching practices. She is an Associate Editor and International Advisory Board member with the Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/) and regularly serves as an assessor for Australian Awards for University Teaching as well as for faculty level awards.  

Dr. Pechenkina is also an author, having published two genre-blending fiction books with Macmillan US (under a pen name) and contributed to literary journals and themed anthologies with short stories and poetry.

Dr. Pechenkina has experience with and is available for HDR supervision in areas which include but are not limited to: socio-cultural aspects of technological innovation, Indigenous education and policy, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), and creative writing. She is particularly interested in interdisciplinary projects that bring together SoTL, creative writing, and the human dimension of technological innovation.