The focus of my historical research is the interrelationships between landscapes, bodies, politics, and power. I am particularly interested in the landscapes of political violence and human adversity. In that context, I have studied islands as places and spaces of incarceration in the former Yugoslavia, environmental and animal histories of political prisons, histories of forced labour, as well as the embodied histories of female combatants.
As a Carson Fellow, I explore the concept of prison islands as laboratories of societal and environmental processes. As Max Weber Fellow at the EUI (Department of History and Civilization), I studied the stories of women combatants in the South-Western Balkans during the period covering the two World Wars, focusing on their bodily and sensory experiences.
My award-winning doctoral research was about Goli Otok (Barren Island): a political prison and labour camp in the FPR Yugoslavia. It followed the island–human constellation, from the foundation of the camp on the island’s previously uninhabited terrain, through the disturbing human experience in this micro-environment, to the quiet afterlife of the former prison site. In the process, I also examined the material quality of narratives (and silences) as crucial aspects of places, spaces, bodies and their interrelations. The research amalgamated a range of approaches: environmental humanities; history of places, spaces, and bodies; labour history; memory studies; oral history; gender studies; nissology (island studies); and prison studies.
I also work on public-facing approaches to history and science through art, by producing written and visual narratives that bring scientific research closer to the wider public. In collaboration with the Quantum Engineering and Technology Labs at the University of Bristol (UoB), I have worked on a series of projects such as producing a graphic novel about the history of quantum communication. These projects won several awards and funding grants, including the Impact Acceleration Account from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
My teaching portfolio includes the EUI’s Gender and Sexuality Seminar (co-taught with Prof. Laura Lee Downs and Prof. Pieter Judson at the Department of History and Civilization), Max Weber Fellows’ Teaching Exchange Seminars (Pompeu Fabra University), Dissertation Writing Workshops for history undergraduates (Loughborough University), ‘Approaching the Past’ module (UoB), and Humanities Postgraduate Research Seminars (UoB).