Irina Pavlova

Irina Pavlova is a Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), employed since 2016. She currently serves as Program Leader for the Sociology Bachelor's and Year study programs (since 2025) and holds multiple institutional roles: Council for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (2019-2023 and 2024-2027), Faculty Council for the Faculty of Technology, Environmental, and Social Sciences (2024-2027), and HVL representative in the ARTEMIS University Alliance Gender Diversity and Inclusion Board (2025-).

Her research centers on youth mobility in Europe (HORIZON 2020 MOVE project), sociology of work, digitalisation of higher education, active citizenship through experiential learning, and internationalisation in educational/labor contexts. She actively promotes work placements as core pedagogical tools and leads HVL's online Sociology program transition since 2024, focusing on mitigating digital divides.

Recent publications (2022-2024) consistently analyze work placement efficacy in sociology education and digital transformation challenges, emphasizing student-mentor interactions and equity concerns in online learning environments.

Scientific recognition includes:

• Education Quality Award (Utdanningskvalitetspris) in 2020 for innovative integration of mandatory placements into Sociology curriculum

She contributes to national policy through committees with the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir) and NOKUT, while supervising students via work placements. Future work focuses on digital pedagogy development for sociology education and ARTEMIS alliance initiatives.

Pavlova leads HVL's Sociology program digitalisation research team and collaborates with ARTEMIS University Alliance on gender diversity projects, driving pedagogical innovation in online higher education.