Dr Mariya Ivancheva
Senior Lecturer
Strathclyde Institute of Education
Personal statement
Mariya Ivancheva is an anthropologist and sociologist of higher education and labour. Her academic and research-driven advocacy work focus on the casualisation and digitalisation of academic labour, the re/production of intersectional inequalities at universities and high-skilled labour markets, and the role of academic and student communities in broader processes of social change especially in transitions to/from socialism. She is the author of multiple peer-reviewed and book chapters, op-ed and policy reports, and has recently published the monograph The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela (Stanford University Press, 2023).
Mariya has carried out historically grounded and theoretically informed ethnographic fieldwork and interdisciplinary mixed-method research in different regions of the world, including Eastern and Western Europe, South America and Southern Africa. As an engaged scholar she has been a member of a number of research-led platforms, working on national, international and EU-level on topics of anti-racism, labour rights, gender and financial justice, e.g. LeftEast, LevFem, Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational (E.A.S.T.) and PrecAnthro. As a member of her anti-perecarity work, she served on the board of the European Association of Social Anthropology, as a member (2019-21) and President (2021-23).
Beyond her academic work, Mariya is a qualified psychotherapist (PGDip Counselling and Therapy, Leeds Beckett University, 2023). In her work she integrates insights and techniques from psychodynamic (psychodrama, TA), humanistic, and cognitive-behavioural paradigms. She works with specific focus on mental health provision in education- and labour-related setting and is interested in issues around the link between collective and individual mental health and wellbeing, volunteer and activist 'free' labour and burn-out, and the effects of 'flexible' capitalist organisation on personal wellbeing and public mental health provision.
Mariya has a large experience in undergraduate and postgraduate research & teaching supervision, through traditional MA & PhD routes, as well as professional doctorates and practitioner inquiry. She is happy to receive PhD / EdD inquiries on topics such as:
- Higher education, leadership and management
- Academic and teaching labour and industrial relations
- Digital education, outsourcing and automation
- Gender/race/class/intersectional inequalities and social justice in education
- Global historical and geopolitical topics in education incl. socialist and alternative university experiments
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Publications
- Intersectionality and precarious subjectivities : within and beyond labour and organisational perspectives
- Peticca-Harris Amanda, Murgia Annalisa, Alberti Gabriella, Ivancheva Mariya
- Organization Vol 32, pp. 933-953 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/13505084251356014
- Who Cares? : Feminised care labour and the crisis of social reproduction in post-socialist Bulgaria
- Ivancheva Mariya, Eneva Stoyanka, Tetevenski Stoyo, Konstantinova Nely, Angelova Alessandria, Kokonova Darina, Drenska Kalina
- (2025)
- Creolizing the Modern : an interdisciplinary interimperial reading of modern Transylvania
- Ivancheva Mariya P
- International Sociology Vol 40, pp. 732-734 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1177/02685809251392484a
- The hidden curriculum for supervisors through the lens of a reading group pt2 : an academic educationist perspective
- Gough Martin, Ivancheva Mariya, Coutinho Eduardo, Green Jonathan A, Bridge Pete
- (2025)
- The Hidden Curriculum for Supervisors through the Lens of a Reading Group
- Bridge Pete, Coutinho Eduardo, Green Jonathan A, Gough Martin, Ivancheva Mariya
- (2025)
- Europe’s liberation 80 years on : Bulgaria
- Ivancheva Mariya
- (2025)
Professional Activities
- "Gendered dimensions of academic precarity in Europe" R4GE (Researchers 4 Gender Equity) PGR seminar invited talk
- Speaker
- 11/2/2026
- PODCAST: Venezuela inside out: in-depth interview on the current political crisis (in Bulgarian)
- Recipient
- 8/1/2026
- Scots academic who lived in Venezuela says Trump attack is a 'dark day' for the world (extended interview on US-Venezuela crisis)
- Recipient
- 4/1/2026
- Anthropology under Attack: The Austerity Predicament. Institute Colloquium, Institute for European Ethnology (HU Berlin)
- Speaker
- 18/11/2025
- ESRC Assessor College (External organisation)
- Advisor
- 30/10/2025
- EASA Anthropology of the State Network Conference
- Participant
- 23/10/2025
Projects
- Free labour and precarity in mental health provision: trainee counsellors’ experiences across the UK
- Ivancheva, Mariya (Principal Investigator)
- 01-Jan-2024 - 30-Jan-2026
- Celebrating Feminist and Anti-racist Pedagogies in Practice bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress 30 Years on
- Koobak, Redi (Co-investigator) Porteous, Holly (Co-investigator) Ivancheva, Mariya (Co-investigator)
- This was an Engage with Strathclyde event that celebrated the 30th anniversary of bell hooks’s classic work "Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom" (1994). It brought together a diverse range of educators and practitioners to discuss and reflect on their experiences of teaching and learning in different contexts in academia and beyond.
The event centred around a roundtable about feminist and anti-racist pedagogies, followed by groupwork to reflect on our own experiences of learning and teaching, using prompts from "Teaching to Transgress". - 29-Jan-2024 - 29-Jan-2024
- Who cares? Feminised labour and social reproduction in post-socialist Bulgaria -KE funding European Economic Opportunity Fund, Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe, 07/2023-06/2027: £130,000
- Ivancheva, Mariya (Principal Investigator)
- KE project funded by the Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe, collaboration with Bulgarian feminist group LevFem, entailed activist research and policy report on care labour, and an ongoing advocacy programme among workers, unions and NGOs in Bulgaria.
- 01-Jan-2023 - 01-Jan-2027
- Who cares? Feminised labour and social reproduction in post-socialist Bulgaria -KE funding European Economic Opportunity Fund, Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe, 07/2023-06/2027: £130,000
- Ivancheva, Mariya (Co-investigator) Eneva, Stoyanka (Co-investigator) Tetevenski, Stoyo (Co-investigator) Angelova, Alessandria (Co-investigator) Konstantinova, Nely (Co-investigator)
- This research project was initially sponsored for two years (2023-2025) by the Economic Opportunities Fund, Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe, and upon successful completion the funding was extended for the next period (2025-2027) to support an advocacy programme, based on the evidence from our report.
The study used a qualitative research and knowledge exchange strategy to explore and render visible the different exploitative and self-exploitative aspects of care work, especially in sectors such as domestic care, social work, health care, elderly care, and nursery/primary school teaching.
Through 50 qualitative interviews with workers in these sectors in five locations across Bulgaria, the study examined the challenges/opportunities faced by care workers with regard to the de-financing of public services, ageing population and outward migration, and relation to institutional care strategies in post-socialist Bulgaria and the European Care Strategy (European Commission 2021).
Beyond researching and visibilising different norms of care work and how it is exacted and performed within families and communities, nationally and transnationally, the project also works with diverse stakeholders (workers, policy-makers, trade unions, NGOs) to increase the public understanding of the role of social reproduction and care sector for economic and social stability in every sector of society, and push for legislative change.
The project's KE activities were featured in Strathclyde's Annual Sustainability Report 2023-2024. - 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2027
- Who cares? Feminised labour and social reproduction in post-socialist Bulgaria -KE funding European Economic Opportunity Fund, Alliance for Gender Equality in Europe, 07/2023-06/2027: £130,000
- Ivancheva, Mariya (Principal Investigator)
- A 2+2 years grant for research-led KE/advocacy work, administered via the Bulgarian feminist NGO LevFem, that included in-dept qualitative fieldwork with care workers, a book-length policy report, and ongoing advocacy and lobbying work on national level.
- 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2027
- Emergent student trajectories, experiences, and needs: MSc Education Studies
- Ivancheva, Mariya (Principal Investigator) Roxburgh, David (Co-investigator)
- This survey explored the personal and professional trajectories, motivations and needs of Strathclyde Institute of Education's MSc Education Studies students in the January and September cohorts. As the course has grown exponentially just over a few years, attracting students from new geographies, age groups and experience in formal education, the course leaders of the programme undertook this scoping survey in order to better understand the trajectories and motivations that bring students to our programme. The objective of collecting and collating this information was two-fold. On the one hand, it was to develop a better understanding of the personal and academic circumstances and needs of the students and look better to address them in the current and future cohorts. On the other hand, this information will help us and other course leaders plan better for future cohorts when it comes to academic content, student services and professional development needs.
- 01-Jan-2023 - 30-Jan-2024
Contact
Dr
Mariya
Ivancheva
Senior Lecturer
Strathclyde Institute of Education
Email: mariya.ivancheva@strath.ac.uk
Tel: Unlisted