Dr. Susanna Karakhanyan is the Higher Education Regulation & Licensing Director at the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge, UAE. She is the 7th (Past) President of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE), a global network of over 350 tertiary education quality assurance bodies. With experience advising nearly 40 governments worldwide, Dr. Karakhanyan has led major education reform initiatives under the auspices of organizations such as UNESCO, the World Bank, the Council of Europe, and the Asian Development Bank. Her work spans tertiary education governance, policymaking, quality assurance, curriculum design, and academic integrity.
Dr Karakhanyan holds an M.S.Ed from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in Social Sciences from Radboud University Nijmegen. Her research focuses on education policy, governance, and quality assurance, and she is the lead author of INQAAHE’s flagship publication, Global Trends in Higher Education Quality Assurance- a research project that engages lead QA and TE experts globally and contributes to the body of knowledge on quality assurance on cyclical basis – every five years. Her research background has helped her tremendously in the establishment of new and evaluation/review of existing tertiary education systems in a diversity of contexts at the global level with aim of promoting relevance, efficiency in operations and transformative power of tertiary education.
