Dr Lana Repar

Biography

Dr Lana Repar is a Lecturer in Food Business in the Department of Food Business and Development with Cork University Business School. She is a Co-Director of the MSc in Food Business and Innovation Programme and teaches modules at undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education levels across Cork University Business School and University College Cork. Her teaching involves digital branding and marketing, creativity, innovation and opportunity recognition, food entrepreneurship, systematic literature review methods and research ethics. She uses innovative business simulation technologies, case studies and role-playing scenarios as part of her experiential teaching techniques. 

Lana’s research interests include digital media marketing in the food industry, food entrepreneurship and innovation, consumers’ food preferences and research methodologies. Dr Repar publishes her work in international journals in the food, development and consumer research area. She has also served as a guest editor for Special Issues and a reviewer for journals in the area of sustainability and food. She recently received an Emerging Scholar Award by the US-based Common Ground Research Networks in the Food Studies Research Network thematic area. Lana was also a recipient of the Best Poster Prize at the Livestock, Environment and People Conference organised by the University of Oxford. Dr Repar supervised one PhD and two Master’s by research students to completion. Lana is currently supervising two PhD students and is part of a supervisory team that was awarded a funded Walsh Fellowship in collaboration with Teagasc. Dr Repar’s research has been cited by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) based in London and one of the world’s leading independent policy and action research organisations, as well as by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) based in Washington, DC, which is a research centre of CGIAR, the world’s largest agricultural innovation network. 

Dr Repar was successful in securing a prestigious and highly competitive PhD scholarship funded by the European Commission under the Agricultural Transformation by Innovation (AgTraIn) Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate Programme. She worked on food supply chain management and contract trading and was enrolled at University College Cork, Ireland as her primary institution and the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain as her second institution and completed her PhD in 2017. Her post-doctoral project explored the economic and societal impact of the Irish suckler beef sector. Lana obtained her MSc in Agribusiness and Rural Development and BSc in Agricultural Economics from the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Croatia. Lana also holds a Certified Digital Marketing Professional qualification issued by the Digital Marketing Institute as well as Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from UCC. Dr Repar also served as a research expert for industry for Voxpro powered by TELUS International. 

Dr Lana Repar is a Co-Director for the MSc in Food Business and Innovation Programme (Cork University Business School) and a Co-Chair of the College of Business and Law Research Ethics Committee (University College Cork). She is also a co-founder of the Dairy Evolution Next (DEX) Network which connects researchers and practitioners across the UK and Ireland and is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Irish Research Council (IRC). Dr Repar has extensive experience of entrepreneurship education initiatives and of running educational programmes in a blended format, including HEA-UCC Summer Schools and Entrepreneurship Education Initiatives and the student entrepreneurship accelerator programme Student Inc. In her research and teaching work in entrepreneurship and food business, Lana collaborates with colleagues from the USA, Australia, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Germany and Croatia.