Meet the MEMPOP Researchers
The MEMPOP team includes researchers with expertise in memory studies, cultural studies, history, media studies, gender studies, and digital humanities. The project, led by Natalija Majsova and Vjeran Pavlaković, is run by the University of Ljubljana and University of Rijeka.
Natalija Majsova
Associate Professor of Cultural Studies @ UNI LJ
Natalija’s research cuts across memory studies, film and media studies, heritage interpretation, and (post-)socialist popular cultures. Natalija is especially interested in the mechanisms of collective memory and remembrance practices at the nexus of projections of the future and imaginaries of the past in the context of technological transformations. She is the author of ‘Memorable Futures: Soviet SF Cinema and the Space Age’ (Lexington Books, 2021) and main co-editor of the Social Science Forum journal.
Vjeran Pavlaković
Professor of History and Cultural Studies @ UNI RI
Vjeran’s current research includes graffiti and murals as sites of memory, slow memory and Balkan conflicts, and a history of Dalmatian immigrants in the American Southwest. He was the lead researcher on the Memoryscapes project as part of Rijeka’s European Capital on Culture in 2020 and a co-founder of the Cres Summer School on Transitional Justice and Memory Politics. He is the co-editor of the volume ‘Framing the Nation and Collective Identity in Croatia’ (Routledge, 2019), which was re-issued in Croatian 2022.
Mitja Velikonja
Professor of Cultural Studies & Head of the Center for Cultural and Religious Studies @ UNI LJ
Mitja’s main research areas include contemporary Central-European and Balkan political ideologies, subcultures and graffiti culture, collective memory and post-socialist nostalgia. Amongst his most recent monographs are ‘Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe’ (Routledge, 2020; translated into Serbian, Albanian, Slovenian, Macedonian and Ukranian) and ‘The Chosen Few – Aesthetics and Ideology in Football-Fan Graffiti and Street Art’ (Doppelhouse Press, 2021).
Diana Grgurić
Professor of Musicology @ UNI RI
Diana’s research interests encompass acoustic ecology, traditional music, the intermediality of music and literature, as well as popular music. She is the author of 5 books and over 30 articles on various aspects of music.
Mila Orlić
Associate Professor of Contemporary History @ UNI RI
Mila’s main fields of interest include border studies, the history and memory of the Upper Adriatic in the post WWII period, state and nation-building processes, migration movements, categories of identification and multi- ethnic and cultural regions. She has extensively published on these topics, most recently the monograph ‘Identitetá di confine. Storia dell’Istria e degli istiani dal 1943 a oggi’ (Viella, Rome 2023).
Jasmina Šepetavc
Assistant Professor and Researcher in Cultural Studies and Gender Studies @ UNI LJ
Jasmina’s research interests include film, popular music, and feminist and queer theory. She is a part of editorial teams at the Social Science Forum journal, as well as the Feminist Encounters journal and the Slovenian magazine Ekran. She also works as a film critic and film festival selector and is a member of Fipresci – International federation of film critics.
Boris Ružić
Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies @ UNI RI
Boris’s research interests lie at the intersection of politics of emancipation, (amateur) moving image, unstable archives and narrators, as well as digital technologies. He has co-authored a book on contemporary film and media analysis and held jury duties at various film festivals. At this very moment, he holds the presidency of the governing board of Art-kino Rijeka.
Jernej Kaluža
Assistant Professor and Researcher in Communication Sciences and Cultural Studies @ UNI LJ
Jernej’s current work spans the areas of critical theory, communication- and journalism studies. Before that, he had been working as a journalist and editor (on Radio Študent, Ljubljana) for more than a decade. Among other things, he has published several articles in the field of popular music studies and worked on the project ‘Slovenian Folk-Pop as Politics: Perceptions, Receptions and Identities’.
Robert Bobnič
Researcher in Media and Cultural Studies @ UNI LJ
Robert’s research interests include history of media technology, theories of computation, digital sociology, popular music, and internet cultures. He is particularly interested in media-archaeological understanding of the impact of computational technologies on contemporary culture, and the formation of cultural taste.
Gal Kirn
Assistant Professor of Sociology of Culture @ UNI LJ
Gal’s research has focused most notably on the topics of ruptures and transitions in (post)socialist and (post)Yugoslav context, in particular, he studies the intersection of the fields of art, politics and memory in the period of national liberation struggle. He has extensive work experience in the German academic context (Institute of Cultural Inquiry – ICI Berlin, Humboldt University, TU Dresden, GWZO Leipzig) and pursued a range of topics from memory culture, avant-garde film to contemporary cultural and political theory.
Nina Cvar
Assistant Professor of Sociology of Culture @ UNI LJ
Nina’s research interests range from philosophy to image politics. She is a member of the editorial board of Anthropos: Journal of Philosophy & Psychology.A professional film critic between 2008 and 2017, contributing to all major Slovenian publications, including Radio Student, Ekran, Kino! etc. She received the Nika Bohinc award in 2023. Apart from her research in cultural studies, film, philosophy, and sociology of art culture, she is also affiliated with the the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at University of Ljubljana. There, she involved in research projects addressing policies on digitalisation and digital inclusion, mainly within the EU.
Maruška Nardoni
Researcher in Science and Technology Studies @ UNI LJ
Maruška is interested in the platform business model, various forms of data monetization and datafication, while not neglecting the approach of political economy. She is especially enthusiastic about the development of machine learning models and its cultural logic of computation.
Benedikt Perak
Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies @ UNI RI
Benedikt’s core research revolves around the application of digital humanities methods, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence in social interaction and the creation of digital assistants. He leads the Center for Language Research, the Laboratory for Research of Cultural Complexity, and a Laboratory within the University Center for Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security. His significant projects include EmoCNet, which focuses on the linguistic expression of emotions and FRAMNAT, which delves into political rituals and cultural memory.
Rodoljub Jovanović
Postdoctoral researcher @ UNI RI
Rodoljub’s research takes an interdisciplinary perspective combining insights from social psychology, political science, and education to explore education and youth in post-conflict societies. He is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. During his doctoral studies Rodoljub was a Marie Skłodovska-Curie COFUND PhD Fellow. His recent publications include: Reaching Peace by Teaching the War: How History Teachers in Kosovo Teach About the Kosovo War? (2022); The Next Generation: Nationalism and Violence in the Narratives of Serbian Students on the Break-up of Yugoslavia (Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2022).
Owen Kohl
External Researcher
Owen’s anthropological research explored media-making and different social imaginations of home and homeland. He asks how communication technologies intersect with dynamic understandings of belonging and power, both in contemporary US and after socialist Yugoslavia’s dismemberment. Kohl’s extensive teaching is intervowen with themes from his manuscript Were the Balkans Made for Rap? A Domestic Hip-Hop Prime. His considerations of media politics now extend to analyzing news, crisis narratives, and ideologies of alterity.