Dr. Katarina Kušić

Dr Katarina Kušić is a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Vienna. Her research interests include land politics, statebuilding and peacebuilding interventions, interpretive and fieldwork-based methods, and post-colonial and decolonial thought. Her current work explores international political ecologies of land and human-nature relations more broadly. Her PhD and the ensuing monograph (University of Michigan Press, 2024) focused on post-war reconstruction efforts in South East Europe. Katarina received her MA from Central European University, and holds a PhD in International Politics from Aberystwyth University.

Full list of publications: https://bit.ly/KKusicPubs

International Political Ecologies of Land in Southeast Europe: Policymaking, everyday experiences, and alternative political imaginaries

The project ‘International Political Ecologies of Land in Southeast Europe: Policymaking, everyday experiences, and alternative political imaginaries’ (IPELSEE) investigates the relations that make and remake the meaning of land in political, social, ecological, and economic transformations.

While International Relations and Political Science have traditionally studied land as central to power and approached it through categories of territory and sovereignty, they remain limited and limiting when it comes to the multiple dimensions of land beyond those categories. IPELSEE excavates these different dimensions through place-based studies in South East Europe. Using archival research, participant observation, interviews, and policy analysis, IPELSEE brings to fore the politics of human-nature relations that underpin different conceptions and meanings of land.

The project is funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellowship (ID: 101060995).