Welcome

I am a social and political theorist who studies, writes, and thinks – not necessarily in that order – about how we, as humans, acquire, organize, classify, and process knowledge, both about our surroundings and about ourselves. These questions I believe to be 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 knowledge is inherently neither – most of my work deals with how specific practices of knowledge production 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 inequality and injustice, especially those enabled/made possible in and through systems and institutions of knowledge production, including universities.

Since 2020, I’ve been Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology, Durham University (UK). I am also an Associate Fellow of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College, USA. Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge, Marie Curie fellow at the University of Aarhus, lecturer at the Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), Singidunum University, and The Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade, and have held visiting positions at Bard College (USA), the University of Bristol (UK), University of Auckland (New Zealand), the Open Society Archives (Budapest, Hungary), and the University of Oxford.

I am an editor at The Philosopher, UK’s longest-running public philosophy journal, member of the Steering Group of Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society (CHESS) at Durham University, as well as a member of the Social Ontology Group at the University of Cambridge.

My main interests and areas of expertise are:

[1] Social theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science – I am interested in social theory as a meta-language for making sense of social reality; this also means I am interested in how claims in this language are formulated and regulated. This includes frameworks or ‘schools of thought’ that seek to develop an understanding of social processes with implications for politics and practice (commonly known as ‘critical’), including, but not limited to, Marxism*, critical theory, feminism, critical realism, pragmatism, psychoanalysis and queer theory. 

My theoretical work primarily consists in the exploration and clarification of the meaning, use, and ontological status of concepts (sometimes referred to as social ontology), in particular those on the boundary between theory and practice (such as neoliberalism or critique). I developed the concept of epistemic positioning, which refers to relational valuation practices that link the identity of the knower (epistemic subject) with the object of knowledge (epistemic object); and gnossification, which refers to the affective work of turning conditions of possibility into objects of knowledge.

Methodologically, my work combines elements of philosophy (primarily analytical philosophy) with anthropology and sociology to inquire into the social life of concepts – how they are produced, performed, and contested by different actors. This leads me to…

[2] Sociology of knowledge, as the study of the relationship between social processes and knowledge production; history of thought, as the historical inquiry into the development of certain modes of knowing, as well as related fields of sociology of education, as the study of systems, ideologies and practices of knowledge production and distribution, and sociology of intellectuals, as the particular study of those who produce knowledge.

I wrote my second PhD (2019, University of Cambridge) about the relationship between neoliberalism – understood as diagnostic and normative concept, as well as a particular ideology/orientation within political economy – and ways in which intellectuals understand, interpret, and criticise it. In ‘Knowing Neoliberalism‘, I introduced the concept of gnossification to capture the affective work performed by critique as a speech-act but also a mode of relating to oneself as a subject (and to one’s environment as a — knowable — object). In ‘No such thing as sociological excuses? Performativity, rationality and social-scientific expertise in late liberalism‘ I discussed the social, political and historical trajectory of sociological knowledge in the context of late- and post-liberalism, and the political/disciplinary lives of sociological knowledge claims as speech-acts that can act as, alternatively, explanation, critique, and ‘excuse’. 

My major contribution around the discussions of the (ab)use(s) of knowledge in the Covid-19 pandemic was coining the phrase “no such thing as [just] following the science“, which strove to draw attention to the political uses of scientific authority and expertise. I have also co-written a paper on UK Government’s use of scientific advice in the Covid-19 pandemic, and have provided extensive commentary, analysis, and discussion of the relationship between knowledge and prediction in crises, including the climate crisis. 

Prior to this, I wrote about the links between (post)socialism and processes of knowledge production, including the transformation of class and other categories of political subjectivity in and through education policies. In both, I looked at how particular structures – relatively stable relations between objects, political discourses and forms of governance – interact with human agency, that is, come to mobilise particular forms of reflexivity and political subjectivity in contexts of social change.

[3] This relates to politics – more precisely, political philosophy and political sociology. My book From Class to Identity: Politics of Education Reforms in Former Yugoslavia (Central European University Press, 2014) is an historical and sociological analysis of how political processes, including education reforms, interact with broader social transformation including regime change, war, and in the process frame and re-shape the subject(s) of politics. In my research, I deal with the intersection between sociology of knowledge and political economy – what could be dubbed political economy of knowledge production – that focuses on the social and political processes that influence how knowledge is created, valued and exchanged. This includes the relationship between policies and mechanisms of funding and measuring the production of knowledge (such as impact, REF and TEF) the social and political role of universities (e.g. issues of academic freedom and university autonomy), as well as broader issues of access to, and use of, knowledge – from open access and intellectual property, to issues of expertise, epistemic in/justice, and in/equality.

My work in this domain includes introducing the concept of ‘epistemic positioning‘, which combines the political economy of relational judgments concerning knowers and knowledge (or epistemic subjects and epistemic objects) with epistemic injustice; an analysis of the moral economy and political ontology of Open Access; reframing universities through assemblage theory to study territorialisation, deterritorialisation, and boundary practices; and forms of political agency in universities. I have also written on student movements, the implications of supranational governance and shifting boundaries of nation-states for universities in Europe.

[4] Last, but not least, I have a lasting interest in human relationships and the social framing of relationality. This includes relational sociology, relational ethics, and relational ontology, as well as the ways in which relations (professional, affective, conceptual) intersect with social dynamics, including mechanisms for the reproduction of class, gender, and racial inequality. My first PhD (University of Belgrade, 2008) was on the transformation of the concept of ‘romantic relationship’ in a post-socialist environment. My current research deals with the concept of non-reciprocity, including in interpersonal relations, and its implications for concepts such as (non-)monogamy, consent, or (in)equality (or love, for that matter).