Hello! I am Ana Javornik – an academic who enjoys doing research on how consumers engage with digital and virtual content on online platforms. I am particularly focused on augmented reality and immersive technologies. I hope my research can contribute to the understanding of how we can use these technologies in a meaningful way such that they allow us to nurture the key human values.
Where is my academic home? I am a Senior Lecturer in Digital marketing at School of Management at University of Bristol. Prior to that I was a Lecturer in Marketing as Newcastle University Business School. And before that, I was a visiting PhD student and a research associate at UCL Interaction Centre, where I had an amazing time conducting interdisciplinary research at the intersection of human-computer interaction and marketing – I continue to find this approach to be very important.
As for my academic background, I studied sociology, comparative literature and French language in my undergraduate studies at the University of Ljubljana. Thanks to two years of rather exciting corporate experience, I got very interested in marketing and went on to do my Master degree in Communication and Economics (with minor in Marketing) at Università della Svizzera italiana in the stunning city of Lugano in Switzerland. I then pursued my PhD there and investigated different types of consumer experience with augmented reality. That is when I really got into the topic of how people use augmented reality and immersive tech and the interest has prevailed to this day.
I regularly publish in internationally recognised journals (Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing, Psychology & Marketing and others) and present at leading conferences in marketing (ACR, EMAC, Interactive Marketing Research Conference) and also in human-computer interaction (ACM SIGCHI). I received several awards and funding for my research.
When I don’t work, I like to read books, travel, spend time with friends and family, play piano, run, be in nature and speak foreign languages. When I was a teenager, I performed in theatre shows and dabbled with the idea of becoming an actress, but the love for knowledge and research prevailed. I come from Slovenia – a truly beautiful country. I was fortunate to have numerous opportunities to live abroad – I studied and worked in France and Switzerland and also had a chance to spend short time in the US before settling in the UK.