Marijana Matijaš
She is a Senior Teaching and Research Assistant at the Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Croatia, where she has been employed since 2015. She graduated in Psychology from the Faculty of Croatian Studies in 2015 and earned her PhD at the University of Zagreb in 2021 with the thesis The Role of Career Adaptability in the University-to-work Transition.
She has completed research training at Durham University Business School (3 months) and the University of Amsterdam (12 months), as well as numerous statistical and methodological workshops and summer schools. She is actively involved in national and international research projects, particularly within the COST Action Critical Perspectives on Career and Career Guidance, where she serves as a Management Committee member for Croatia and as a grant award co-coordinator.
She is also engaged in science popularization through organizing Brain Awareness Week and Psychology Week at the Catholic University of Croatia and has served as Acting Head of the University Career Center. She is the recipient of several national and international awards and fellowships, including the Society of Reproductive and Infant Psychology Early Career Researcher Award, the British Scholarship Trust fellowship, and the Croatian Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship.
RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Career development and management, mental health in the workplace, mental health of researchers, perinatal mental health, work–family conflict, and scale development and validation.
COURSES:
Psychology of Organizational Behavior
Work Psychology
Experimental Psychology
Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
Practicum in Methodology
Practicum in Informatics
Cognitive Psychology
PROJEKTI:
• Management Committee member of the COST Action Critical Perspectives on Career and Career Guidance - COCAG (2024–2028)
• Research Associate on the HORIZON project Understanding, predicting, and treating depression in pregnancy to improve mothers and offspring mental health outcomes – HappyMums (2022–2026)
• Lead of the Mobility Program – Outgoing Mobility of Senior Assistants (MOBODL-2023-12-6514), Croatian Science Foundation (2024–2025).
• Member of the COST Action Researcher Mental Health – ReMO (2023–2024)
• Research Associate on the project Determinants, outcomes, and interrelation of mental and physical health during pregnancy and postpartum (MumHealth), Catholic University of Croatia (2022–2025)
• Research Associate on the project International Survey of Childbirth-Related Trauma - INTERSECT (2022-2024)
• Research Associate on the project Parental mental health and contextual factors as determinants of parent-infant bonding, Catholic University of Croatia (2019 )
• Research Associate on the project Association between maternal emotional state in pregnancy and placental DNA methylation of serotonin-related genes, Catholic University of Croatia (2017–2018)
• Research Associate on the project Parents' work, family economic hardship and well-being of parents and children, Catholic University of Croatia (2016)
• Research Associate on the project International Civic and Citizenship Study (ICCS), NCVVO (2015–2016)
