Seed Money Fellows

Current Fellows

Dr. Agnieszka Pasieka

Agnieszka Pasieka is a sociocultural anthropologist. Her work focuses on political mobilization, activism and social movements, and explores how different social actors mobilize to address inequality and power hierarchies and what kind of alternative world they envision. She is author of Hierarchy and pluralism: living religious difference in Catholic Poland (Palgrave 2015) and Living right: far-right youth activists in contemporary Europe (forthcoming with Princeton University Press). She has also authored numerous journal publications on religious pluralism, religious and ethnic minorities, multiculturalism, postsocialist transformation, and, most recently, far-right movements, transnational nationalism and fascism. Her new project tackles the problem of far-right environmental politics.

Dr. Bojan Baća

Bojan Baća is a political and cultural sociologist whose research primarily focuses on civil society, social movements, and contentious politics. He obtained his PhD from York University in 2019 and has since held postdoctoral positions at the University of Graz, Charles University, and Heidelberg University. His most recent postdoctoral fellowship was at the University of Gothenburg as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2021–2023). In addition, he has also held junior research fellowships at the University of Rijeka, New Europe College, and Akademie Schloss Solitude. He is currently a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Montenegro, and a Seed Money Fellow at the Research Platform for the Study of Transformations and Eastern Europe, University of Vienna.

His research has appeared in various peer-reviewed publications, such as SociologyAntipodeInternational Political SociologyPolitical GeographyEurope-Asia Studies, and Theory, Culture & Society (forthcoming), among others. Over recent years, he has garnered several research awards recognizing his contributions to the study of civil society and social movements in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe, including the 2022 Routledge Area Studies Interdisciplinarity Award, the 2022 Zagorka Golubović Engaged Research Award, and the 2020 Danubius Young Scientist Award. His professional background includes more than a decade of experience in the non-governmental sector, where he worked as a policy analyst and consultant. He is currently a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG).

The main goal of his six-month Seed Money Fellowship is to prepare a grant application focused on examining similarities and divergences in meaning-making practices and knowledge-production processes involved in conspiracy theorizing in the post-Yugoslav region during two significant historical events: the dissolution of the communist bloc in 1989 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Through a mixed-method approach, the proposed project will seek to offer a comprehensive account of the continuities in and transformations of conspiracy theories during postsocialist transformation.

Selected publications:

  • Bojan Baća (2023) “Three Stages of Civil Society Development in the Global East: Lessons from Montenegro, 1989–2020”, Political Geography, 1–11. DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103005
  • Bojan Baća (2023) “Enacting Resistance, Performing Citizenship: Trajectories of Political Subjectification in the Post-Democratic Condition”, Sociology 57(1): 175–193.
  • Bojan Baća (2022) “Practice Theory and Postsocialist Civil Society: Toward a New Analytical Framework”, International Political Sociology 16(1): 1–21.
  • Bojan Baća & Kenneth Morrison (2022) “Dependence, Independence, Interdependence: Montenegro’s Foreign Policy from 1991 to 2020”, in A New Eastern Question? Great Powers and the Post-Yugoslav States, edited by Soeren Keil and Bernhard Stahl. Stuttgart: Ibidem and New York: Columbia University Press. 317–343.
  • Bojan Baća (2021) “‘Demanding What is Not Theirs to Demand’: Rebellious Students in Post-Socialist Montenegro”, in When Students Protest: Universities in the Global North, edited by Judith Bessant, Analicia Mejia Mesinas and Sarah Pickard. London: Rowman and Littlefield. 141–158.
  • Bojan Baća (2020) “Everyday Acts of Citizenship: Infrapolitical Resistance and its Political Consequences in the Age of Social Media”, in Resistances: Between Theories and the Field, edited by Sarah Murru and Abel Polese. London: Rowman and Littlefield. 37–59.
  • Bojan Baća (2018) “Forging Civic Bonds ‘From Below’: Montenegrin Activist Youth between Ethnonational Disidentification and Political Subjectivation”, in Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe: Beyond Ethnicity, edited by Tamara P. Trošt and Danilo Mandić. London: Routledge. 127–147.
  • Bojan Baća (2017) “The Student’s Two Bodies: Civic Engagement and Political Becoming in the Post-Socialist Space”, Antipode 49(5): 1125–1144.
  • Bojan Baća (2017) “‘We Are All Beranselo’: Political Subjectivation as an Unintended Consequence of Activist Citizenship”, Europe-Asia Studies 69(9): 1430–1454.
  • Bojan Baća (2017) “Civil Society Against the Party-State? The Curious Case of Social Movements in Montenegro”, in The Democratic Potential of Emerging Social Movements in Southeastern Europe, edited by Jasmin Mujanović. Sarajevo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. 33–39.

Dr. Ognjen Kojanić

Ognjen Kojanić an environmental and economic anthropologist with a geographical focus in the former Yugoslavia. He holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, an MA from Central European University, and a BA from the University of Belgrade. His current research lies at the intersection of urban political ecology, infrastructure studies, and political economy.

Former Fellows

Ondřej Daniel is a cultural historian working on topics related to popular culture, social class, urban/rural divide and migration in the context of Czech and European postsocialism. He published works that synthesized his research on the role of subcultures and violence in the development of postsocialist Czech popular culture. His current work examines intersections of class and culture in contemporary Czech history.

Dr. György Majtényi

György Majtényi is a social historian and professor at Károly Eszterházy University in Eger (Hungary). Between 2000 and 2011, he was department head of the National Archives of Hungary. His recent research interests include social history of East Central Europe in the twentieth century, Roma social history, social history of football, intellectual history, and historiography. Besides being the author of many articles on these issues, he has published six monographs dealing with post-1945 social history of Hungary. His latest English language volume deals with the social history of Hungarian ruling elite during state socialism (Indiana University Press, 2021).

Eva-Maria Walther studied Social Anthropology at the universities of Tübingen, Pécs and Stockholm. She attained her doctoral degree at the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies at the University of Regensburg for her dissertation titled "Helping refugees in Slovakia: Messy encounters, moral dilemmas, and mixed emotions". She is currently a Seed Money Fellow at the Research Platform for the Study of Transformations and Eastern Europe.

Dr. Katarina Kušić

Katarina Kušić holds a PhD in International Politics from Aberystwyth University. She is currently developing a new project that studies political ecologies of land in Southeast Europe from a trans-disciplinary perspective. 

Dr. Goran Musić

Goran Musić is a social historian of labor in East-Central and Southeast Europe, approaching the field from a broader disciplinary background in Global History, Nationalism Studies and Political Economy. 

Dr. Julia Bavouzet

Julia Bavouzet is a Postdoc researcher in History, working on Hungarian administration in the 19th and 20th centuries.