Ekaterina Pechenkina

Dr Katya Pechenkina is a cultural anthropologist, teaching and learning scholar, and multi award winning senior lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology. Her research focuses on teaching excellence, evaluation of teaching’s impact on learning, and understanding how educators and learners experience technological and pedagogical change. Katya oversees a range of strategic institutional initiatives, including development and refinement of Swinburne’s guidance policy around the use of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning. Her undergraduate degree in social anthropology included a tenure as an International Research and Exchange Board Fellow at the California State University Bakersfield, where she researched how international students experience belonging and selfhood. Katya’s PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Melbourne (2014) investigated the notions of academic success among Indigenous Australian students, drawing recommendations around design and provision of support as well as the role of transformational resistance in academic achievement. Katya’s current research interests are scholarship of teaching and learning, especially in the areas of professional learning and creative industries, and socio-cultural aspects of technological innovation in higher education. Her methodological expertise comprises qualitative and mixed approaches. She is particularly skilled in ethnographic methods of inquiry, including digital ethnography and study of online communities.

Katya’s teaching and convenorship encompass such subjects as scholarly teaching, online learning and communication, and inclusive learning and teaching practices. She has developed and has been convening Learning and Teaching Project, the capstone unit in Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching (HE), Swinburne’s award-winning flagship degree for educators. As of 2025, Katya has been GCLT(HE)’s Course Director, leading a team of dedicated convenors and educators and supporting learning journeys of over 100 students per semester.

Katya is an Associate Editor with Electronic Journal of e-Learning (EJEL), a member of the International Advisory Board for the Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education (ETHE), Deputy Leader of Swinburne Women Academic Network, and Research Affiliate with Australia’s National Centre for Reconciliation Practice. She regularly serves as an assessor for Australian Awards for University Teaching and has won two Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Awards (2019, 2021) as part of teams, as well as the 2021 Vice-Chancellor’s Reconciliation Award (Team). Further, in 2020 she was Highly Commended for the Vice-Chancellor’s Service Excellence Award (Team), and in 2024 she won the Open Education Award for Excellence for Open Collaboration for her work as part of the team responsible for the highly commended book Higher Education for Good: Teaching and Learning Futures. Her own book Design, Delivery, and Evaluation of Professional Learning for University Staff is forthcoming with IGI Global in 2026.

Katya has received research funding from Adobe, Echo360, National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education among other grants. She is a founder and convenor of the inaugural  professional Learning Symposium Upskilling University Workforce in the Times of Uncertainty which brings together educators, practitioners and academic developers involved in professional learning of university staff.

As an HDR supervisor, Katya is interested in interdisciplinary projects that bring together the scholarship of teaching learning, technological innovation research and creative approaches to research.