Download the Welcome Address Speaker and Plenary Session 1 Chair profile of Dr Susanna Karakhanyan.pdf

​In addition to serving as the President of INQAAHE (2016-2018), Dr. Karakhanyan is the founding member and Immediate Past President of the Accreditation Commission of the National Center for Professional Education Quality Assurance in Armenia and the Quality Assurance Section Manager of the Abu Dhabi Education Council, in the United Arab Emirates.
Dr. Karakhanyan’s expertise evolves around authoring, initiating and implementing a variety of projects under the auspices of the Council of Europe, UNESCO, Open Society Institute, to name some. All the projects address higher education reforms in general and different elements in quality assurance in particular. She serves, for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and UNESCO as a consultant in a range of quality assurance missions. The systems to which she had tangible contribution include, but are not limited to such countries and regions as Albania, Mongolia, Tajikistan, other former Soviet countries, Southern Africa and Middle East. She authors and delivers capacity building events and external reviews of QA systems/agencies per country/agency requests. Her service has been acknowledged through such awards as a Gold Medal from the Ministry of Education and Science of Armenia for significant contribution to the HE system in Armenia in 2015, an Honorary Plaque for Excellence in Teaching from the Open Society Institute.
Dr. Karakhanyan holds M.S.Ed in Educational Administration/Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania, the USA and PhD in Social Sciences from Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Her research interests focus around higher education governance and administration, reforms, policy making, policy diffusion and transfer, and external and internal quality assurance. Her research background has helped her tremendously in the establishment of new and evaluation/review of existing external and internal (both quality assurance agencies and higher education institutions) quality assurance systems in a diversity of contexts at the global level.