ProfessorLina Markauskaite

DSC (Vilnius), MCM(Strath), PHD (MII, Vilnius)

Lina Markauskaite is a Professor of Learning Sciences and Deputy Head of School (Research) at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, the University of Sydney, Australia. She received a PhD in informatics (computer sciences) from the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics (Lithuania) in 2000. Lina's current research spans three related areas: 1) students and teachers' digital capabilities; 2) professional learning for complex professional knowledge work; and 3) technology-enhanced interdisciplinary research methods. Her most recent projects have been mainly concerned with understanding the nature of knowledge work in the professions through analysing the capacities needed to solve novel, complex problems. Her formulated account of so called 'epistemic fluency' explains how university students and professionals become skilful at integrating different kinds of knowledge and ways of knowing for working across disciplinary and professional boundaries and crossing traditional theory-practice divides.

Lina's research is integrative - it brings into a single framework research from psychology, neuroscience, design, organisational studies, anthropology, and science and technology studies (STS). Her work pays close attention to how people's cognitive ability ('thinking in the head') is entwined with the environment and action in the world. Her empirical studies focus on the tangible nature of complex knowledge work. They aim to provide curriculum leaders and teachers with direct insights into how to scaffold students' learning for future workplaces. Her work is also very relevant for leaders of inter-disciplinary and inter-professional teams who need to co-design environments for complex teamwork and facilitate this work.

Lina published 3 co-authored books, 2 edited book, 4 guest-edited special issues, and over 130 refereed papers, including in the top SSCI-ranked journals in the Education and Educational Research category, e.g., Computers & Education, Learning and Instruction, British Journal of Educational Technology, Studies in Higher Education, Journal of the Learning Sciences, Teaching and Teacher Education, and Educational Technology Research and Development. Her research grants include four major national competitive grants (two ARC Discovery, ARC Linkage, and OLT), the Norwegian Research Council's Grant, the NSW DoE Strategic Research Grant, the Thompson Fellowship, the SREI 2020 grant, and a number of smaller grants of high practical value (Total: over $4.5M).

Between 2017 and 2020 she was a co-director of the Centre for Research on Learning and Innovation. Currently, she is a member of the Australian Research Council's College of Experts.