Manja Klemenčič - Biography#

Manja Klemenčič researches, teaches, advises, and acts as a consultant in sociology and politics of higher education, European higher education, and comparative higher education. Her major research contribution is in the study of student governments and student representation in higher education which is part of a broader research agenda on student agency and the effects of students on higher education. Klemenčič has 140 publications and over 80 keynotes and invited lectures on a broad array of higher education topics, including student-centered learning and teaching, quality assurance and institutional research, civic role of higher education, academic profession, internationalization, and different aspects of higher education reforms. She has been an invited keynote speaker at major conferences of European academic associations.

Her three staple courses offered at Harvard have repeatedly won Harvard’s awards for teaching excellence. Six times in a row, she was voted by the Harvard Yearbook Publications one of the most impactful professors by the graduating class (’19, ’20, ’21, ’22, ’23, ‘24). In 2020, she received John R. Marquand Award for Excellence in Advising and Support to Students, and in 2021, she is the recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa Alpha-Iota Prize for Excellence in Teaching at Harvard College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Since 2014, Klemenčič serves as Editor-in-Chief of European Journal of Higher Education, since 2015, as Co-editor of the academic book series Understanding Student Experiences in Higher Education (Bloomsbury) and from July 2022, as Co-editor of book series Higher Education Dynamics (Springer). She also served as Co-Editor of the section “Mass and Elite Higher Education” in International Encyclopaedia of Higher Education Systems and Institutions published by Springer Nature (2020). She regularly serves as a consultant for international organizations, and governments on higher education policies and instruments.