Dr Tanja Kovacic works at the Office of the VP for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion, with a lead responsibility in relation to decolonising the curriculum. Previously a post-doctoral researcher at the UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, her work focused on a major evaluation of the educational programmes combatting educational inequality in Ireland. Her PhD explored generational growing-up experiences of youth in socialist and post-socialist Slovenia. Her research spans the sociology of youth and educational inequality, using qualitative methods like biographic and narrative inquiry, epistolary, photovoice and collaborative autoethnography. She has contributed to projects on alternative education in Ireland, the deinstitutionalisation of children in care and an EU-funded project on social robot assistance in dementia care.Tanja has extensive experience in teaching and supporting students. She has worked for years with both graduates, post-graduates and adult learners. She has worked as a tutor and lecturer with the School of Political Science amp; Sociology, Centre for Adult Learning and Professional Development and UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre. Tanja holds a Bachelor of Political Science from the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), MA in Sociology from Lancaster University (Warsaw, Poland), an Interdisciplinary Research and Studies in Eastern Europe (MIREES) from the University of Bologna (Italy) and a PhD from University of Galway.

Sociology of childhood and youth, educational inequality, decolonising, life-course research, biographical and narrative research, epistolary inquiry, creative research methods.

Political science, sociology, community development, qualitative research methodologies