Jelena Brankovic
Biographic Data
| ID | 278680 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jelena Brankovic |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jelena |
| FAMILY NAME | Brankovic |
| SIGNATURE | BRANKOVIC J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Bielefeld University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0485-9096 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Rankings are all bullsh*t anyway, why not do my own?’
Rankings are a well-established genre for evaluating diverse phenomena, yet culturally resonant critiques of them are relatively rare. This paper examines how student vloggers on YouTube challenge and reinterpret university rankings through ‘tier list’ and ‘reaction’ videos, thereby shifting genre expectations. Through a move analysis of 30 such videos, we identify 3 rhetorical actions – making sense of ranking, audience interpellation and subver…
The emergence of university rankings
Nowadays, university rankings are a familiar phenomenon in higher education all over the world. But how did rankings achieve this status? To address this question, we bring in a historical-sociological perspective and conceptualize rankings as a phenomenon in history. We focus on the United States and identify the emergence of a specific understanding of organizational performance in the postwar decades. We argue that the advent of this understan…
The institutionalization of rankings in higher education
In this article, we introduce the special issue of Higher Education that centers on the question of the institutionalization of rankings in higher education. The article has three parts. In the first part, we argue that the grand narratives such as globalization and neoliberalism are unsatisfactory as standalone explanations of why and how college and university rankings become institutionalized. As a remedy, we invite scholars to pay closer atte…
Theorizing together
Werron T, Brankovic J, Ringel L. Theorizing together. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory . 2023:1-22
Making sense of change in higher education research
Higher education studies give considerable attention to understanding change . The interest in change reflects the historical conditions in which higher education emerged as a distinct field of study. Around the mid-twentieth century, a pragmatic need for an academic response to managing larger and more complex higher education institutions and systems was taking shape. This need gave rise to a tradition of studying change in higher education, wh…
The Organizational Engine of Rankings
When explaining the ubiquity of rankings, researchers tend to emphasize macro or contextual phenomena, such as the power of or the trust in numbers, neoliberal forces, or a general spirit of competition. Meanwhile, the properties of rankers are rarely, if at all, taken into account. In contrast to the received wisdom, we argue that the institutionalization of rankings in different fields is also contingent upon another, often-neglected factor: Ov…
Inter-institutional differences in defensive stakeholder management in higher education
In contemporary higher education, stakeholder management is increasingly important given the growing number and complexity of stakeholder groups. Defensive stakeholder management (DSM), defined as verbal responses of universities to stakeholder criticism, is a largely neglected topic in the higher education literature. Drawing from a combination of theoretical perspectives in the organisation science literature, we explore how three Serbian unive…
How Rankings Produce Competition
Der Zusammenhang zwischen Rankings und Konkurrenz wird häufig unterstellt, aber selten genauer untersucht. Der vorliegende Aufsatz geht ihm am Beispiel globaler Universitätsrankings nach. Ausgehend von einem soziologischen Verständnis von Konkurrenz bestimmen wir „Ranken“ als eine soziale Operation, die vier Teiloperationen miteinander kombiniert: Vergleich von Leistungen, Quantifizierung, Visualisierung, und wiederholte Publikation. Visualisieru…
Between world culture and local context
World society theory argues that actor empowerment in local contexts is driven primarily by the expanding world culture, rendering alternative explanations weaker in comparison. This article explores one such alternative explanation and offers an account of actor empowerment which highlights the role of identity constructed in local interaction. The article imports insights from identity theory to show how identities constructed in interaction ma…
How Rankings Produce Competition
Der Zusammenhang zwischen Rankings und Konkurrenz wird häufig unterstellt, aber selten genauer untersucht. Der vorliegende Aufsatz geht ihm am Beispiel globaler Universitätsrankings nach. Ausgehend von einem soziologischen Verständnis von Konkurrenz bestimmen wir „Ranken“ als eine soziale Operation, die vier Teiloperationen miteinander kombiniert: Vergleich von Leistungen, Quantifizierung, Visualisierung, und wiederholte Publikation. Visualisieru…
The Organizational Engine of Rankings
When explaining the ubiquity of rankings, researchers tend to emphasize macro or contextual phenomena, such as the power of or the trust in numbers, neoliberal forces, or a general spirit of competition. Meanwhile, the properties of rankers are rarely, if at all, taken into account. In contrast to the received wisdom, we argue that the institutionalization of rankings in different fields is also contingent upon another, often-neglected factor: Ov…
Theorizing together
Werron T, Brankovic J, Ringel L. Theorizing together. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory . 2023:1-22
How Rankings Produce Competition
Der Zusammenhang zwischen Rankings und Konkurrenz wird häufig unterstellt, aber selten genauer untersucht. Der vorliegende Aufsatz geht ihm am Beispiel globaler Universitätsrankings nach. Ausgehend von einem soziologischen Verständnis von Konkurrenz bestimmen wir „Ranken“ als eine soziale Operation, die vier Teiloperationen miteinander kombiniert: Vergleich von Leistungen, Quantifizierung, Visualisierung, und wiederholte Publikation. Visualisieru…
Between world culture and local context
World society theory argues that actor empowerment in local contexts is driven primarily by the expanding world culture, rendering alternative explanations weaker in comparison. This article explores one such alternative explanation and offers an account of actor empowerment which highlights the role of identity constructed in local interaction. The article imports insights from identity theory to show how identities constructed in interaction ma…
Inter-institutional differences in defensive stakeholder management in higher education
In contemporary higher education, stakeholder management is increasingly important given the growing number and complexity of stakeholder groups. Defensive stakeholder management (DSM), defined as verbal responses of universities to stakeholder criticism, is a largely neglected topic in the higher education literature. Drawing from a combination of theoretical perspectives in the organisation science literature, we explore how three Serbian unive…
The Organizational Engine of Rankings
When explaining the ubiquity of rankings, researchers tend to emphasize macro or contextual phenomena, such as the power of or the trust in numbers, neoliberal forces, or a general spirit of competition. Meanwhile, the properties of rankers are rarely, if at all, taken into account. In contrast to the received wisdom, we argue that the institutionalization of rankings in different fields is also contingent upon another, often-neglected factor: Ov…
Making sense of change in higher education research
Higher education studies give considerable attention to understanding change . The interest in change reflects the historical conditions in which higher education emerged as a distinct field of study. Around the mid-twentieth century, a pragmatic need for an academic response to managing larger and more complex higher education institutions and systems was taking shape. This need gave rise to a tradition of studying change in higher education, wh…
The emergence of university rankings
Nowadays, university rankings are a familiar phenomenon in higher education all over the world. But how did rankings achieve this status? To address this question, we bring in a historical-sociological perspective and conceptualize rankings as a phenomenon in history. We focus on the United States and identify the emergence of a specific understanding of organizational performance in the postwar decades. We argue that the advent of this understan…
The institutionalization of rankings in higher education
In this article, we introduce the special issue of Higher Education that centers on the question of the institutionalization of rankings in higher education. The article has three parts. In the first part, we argue that the grand narratives such as globalization and neoliberalism are unsatisfactory as standalone explanations of why and how college and university rankings become institutionalized. As a remedy, we invite scholars to pay closer atte…
Theorizing together
Werron T, Brankovic J, Ringel L. Theorizing together. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory . 2023:1-22
Rankings are all bullsh*t anyway, why not do my own?’
Rankings are a well-established genre for evaluating diverse phenomena, yet culturally resonant critiques of them are relatively rare. This paper examines how student vloggers on YouTube challenge and reinterpret university rankings through ‘tier list’ and ‘reaction’ videos, thereby shifting genre expectations. Through a move analysis of 30 such videos, we identify 3 rhetorical actions – making sense of ranking, audience interpellation and subver…
Sociology (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Higher Education Governance and Development (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Economics (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Higher education (4 works) · Social science (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Evaluation of Teaching Practices (3 works)