Autumn graduation ceremony for doctors of science at the UP

date: 20.10.2025

category: News

On Thursday, October 16, 2025, the UP held its autumn graduation ceremony for doctors of science. Among the newly awarded Doctors of Science is also Dr. Marianna Gergely from the University of Primorska, Faculty of Education, who obtained her doctorate in the doctoral study programme Educational Sciences.

The Vice-Rector for Scientific Research and Development at the UP, Prof. Dr. Štefko Miklavič, together with the deans of the member faculties and mentors, promoted 12 new doctors of science, who joined the ones who had completed their doctoral studies at the UP.

Marianna Gergely who defended her doctoral thesis at UP PEF entiteled »Analysis and reading of multimodal texts in biology textbooks for secondary school students« under the mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Sonja Starc and co-mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Nataša Dolenc 

Doctoral dissertation summary

»Analysis and reading of multimodal texts in biology textbooks for secondary school students«

In this doctoral dissertation, we focus on multimodal biology textbooks for secondary school students. We find out how the use of semiotic resources in Slovenian biology textbooks has changed from 1881 to 2022. We study the differences in the composition of the language and image resources used in multimodal textbooks and analyse their messaging using the visual grammar instruments of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). We examine how sample groups of students independently interpret the meaning of a onemodal or a multimodal textbook text. We also observed their ability to produce a multimodal text on the topic of mitosis presented in three different textbooks.