Welcome

Thank you for chancing upon my web site.

I am assuming you are here because you have some combination of interest in who I am, what I do, and what I can help you with. Or, if you’re a more output-oriented person, what I write, what I think, and other kinds of content you can glean from me. The links above will lead to more detailed answers to these questions; for an overview, read below. If any or all of these make you think we have something to talk about, get in touch. 

I have never been comfortable with disciplinary affiliations, but if I have to, I describe myself as a social and political theorist. This means I have always been fascinated by how humans think, act, know, and organise, both in relation to their non-human environment and to each other (and to themselves). This led me to PhDs in both sociology and in anthropology, but most of my academic work these days falls across these disciplines and social theory/philosophy, especially the intersection between moral and political philosophy, epistemology, and ethics. 

Questions I ask include what it means to be human in the context of large-scale processes such as climate change, political and social conflict; what we can know (and what we refuse to know) about the future; and what, under these circumstances, we owe – and, more importantly, do not owe – each other. I believe these questions are essential to understanding what we mean by ‘we’, as well as what we – as individuals, groups, and societies – can do.

Since what we do can be both good and bad (given human agency is inherently morally ambiguous), most of my work deals with how specific forms of knowledge, agency, and configurations of power lead to specific outcomes, and how to ensure this happens in the least oppressive way possible. This means I harbour a particular dislike for exploitation, inequality, and injustice, including those enabled/made possible in and through systems and institutions of knowledge production, including universities. 

Currently, I am Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, Durham University (UK), which I joined in 2020. I am also one of the editors of The Philosopher, UK’s longest-running public philosophy journal, and member the Cambridge Social Ontology Group, Previous collectives include the University of Cambridge (PhD then postdoc), University of Aarhus (Marie Curie fellow), Central European University in Budapest (lecturer), Singidunum University (assistant professor), and The Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade (teaching associate, PhD, MPhil, BSc). I have also held visiting positions at the Institute for Practical Ethics at University of California-San Diego, Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College (USA), University of Bristol (UK), University of Auckland (New Zealand), Open Society Archives (Budapest, Hungary), and the University of Oxford (OSI/FCO Chevening fellowship).

My work at present can be grouped into three intersecting areas:

1) Critical analysis of contemporary social relations, including power and forms of governance. As a social scientist, I believe the privilege of academic authority comes with an ethical obligation to provide a (to borrow from Yugoslav Praxis Marxism) ‘relentless critique of all existing conditions’*. This strand in my work has been present from early 2000s, when I engaged in a critical analysis of the intersection between conflict, education policies, and politics of identity, to contemporary analyses of legal regulation of speech or distribution of life chances via production of knowledge about risks such as climate change or Covid-19. As someone whose political convictions are probably most accurately described as anarchist, I have primarily focused on the techniques and effects of the performance of political power of the state, inter-, or supra-state actors, through laws or policy; but I also pay attention to other forms and relations of power, including creation, organisation, and transformation of agency through actors and institutions (from universities to the concept of ‘society’ itself).

Rather than presenting ‘critique for critique’s sake’, which can all too easily turn both into the reification of objects of research and into a myopic validation of own epistemic position(ing), I believe the purpose of a critical analysis of social and political processes is to enable less oppressive and more just and purposeful forms of relating. Buddhism frames this as enlightenment, or liberation, of all sentient beings, but it is not even necessary to go that far. Think of it as massage or physiotherapy: targeting painful junctions so that petrified ways of existing can become ‘unstuck’, released, and to enable the energy to flow in new (and hopefully more beneficial!) ways (at least that’s how I see it. I have no idea how people who actually do massage therapy do). 

2) Social ontology, epistemology, and philosophy of science. In order for things to become unstuck, we need to understand their nature, shape, and sometimes the history of how they became stuck in the first place. The same is true in social theory and philosophy of knowledge. We inherit different social objects and configurations – things we think are “just like that”, such as categories of gender (e.g. what is means to be a ‘woman’), forms of relating (e.g. the idea of ‘having to work’, as well as what counts as ‘work’), and some ideas about what is, in the configuration of things, both desirable and possible (e.g. the idea that ‘we just can’t live without cars’). The job of a social theorist is to unstick these notions, sometimes by showing how they came about (for instance, how certain places became reliant on car transport by eliminating the objects and forms of relations that enabled alternatives), sometimes by demonstrating to people that they do harm or conflict with what they profess they want (psychoanalysis or psychotherapy in principle do a better job, but social theory has a major role in developing concepts that allow us to grasp the constitution of objects and how we relate to them), and sometimes by challenging received notions of what counts as ‘good’ and ‘possible’ (this, in particular, the domain of those of us who have an interest in political philosophy and ethics). The assumption that we need to understand the nature of things in order to address them, however, does not mean that ‘nature’ is somehow extra-social – in social ontology, we understand all beings, objects and relations in the social worlds as fundamentally co-created with and by humans. This, however, does not mean anthropocentric (more than any human-generated perspective must be); if anything, it is closest to deep ecology, in the sense of both having an interest in all forms of life and in understanding that humans are neither superior not particularly special in the overall network of beings.  

My orientation towards the world is one of curiosity, engagement, but also detachment: I believe we should let things be (I have a strong dislike towards techniques and forms of relating, from governance to research, oriented towards disciplining, extraction, and hierarchical ordering – which translates very ambiguously into working in higher education). At the same time, I think we have a strong obligation not to foster – and, where necessary, to obstruct/prevent – relations that seek to exploit, harm, and subjugate other beings, human or not. 

3) Political philosophy, practical ethics and activism. I work at helping communities and individuals foster more inclusive, just, and equitable ways of being. Whether as a union member (I am currently Durham UCU’s migrant rep and environmental co-rep), an activist (I am involved in a number of initiatives, mostly around the intersection of climate and social justice and community development), or using expertise to lead (I served as the Department of Sociology’s EDI lead, and am currently one of Durham’s Environmental Champions), advise (I had acted as consultant for governments, international and non-governmental organizations on post-conflict reconciliation, education, and community development), or support (as advisor, mentor/supervisor, and friend), I am committed to working on all possible fronts to making the world more just, equitable, and hospitable to all peaceful life-forms.

I grew up (or, perhaps more accurately ‘came of age’, given I was 10 when the war in former Yugoslavia started and 18 when it, for most intents and purposes, ended) in a social movement, one that developed in response to state violence both intra-and extra-territorial. This means I grew up with an intense dislike of all forms of exclusionary and oppressive identities and policies (such as nationalism, misogyny, and imperialism), and hierarchical forms of power. While my childhood overlapped with a time of intense social change, I also observed (and perceived, and benefitted from) many of the positive elements of Yugoslav socialism and its corollaries, including free public education, a high standard of gender equality, and a collectivist, egalitarian spirit oriented towards continuous improvement of life for all (or many). This means I neither participate in nor align with many of the elements of contemporary capitalist production, including the unquestioned valuing of profit, competitive, exploitative orientation towards other humans and forms of life, or belief in the necessarily beneficial nature of external regulation (be it statist or market-based). It also means I naturally incline towards autonomist, ecological, and internationalist/anti-nationalist movements, spaces, and initiatives. You can usually find me in or around one of those, and I am also hoping to eventually live in an intentional community of this sort.