I have spent a significant part of my adult life trying to find creative, constructive and collaborative ways out of here. “Here” means whatever names we give to the combined predicament of necropolitical capitalism, neofascism, and the climate crisis, or their long foreshadowing in the late 20th and 21st century. While I grew up in socialism (socialist Yugoslavia collapsed when I was 10), I never thought that either socialism or communism – certainly not in their past forms – gave easy or perfect solutions to this question.
This led me to the study of anthropology, as many other people, to find out how other cultures and periods have approached questions of production, distribution, and joint action (in 2000, thinking about which major to choose, I saw a quote from Tim Ingold “Anthropology is philosophy with the people in”, and I knew immediately this was the kind of philosophy I wanted to do). It led me to travel extensively, first for conferences, research, or any other excuse to get around the visa systems and border regimes that were systematically hostile to people with my kind of passport, and then as part of the internationally mobile precarious academic workforce (late neoliberalism’s own ‘Republic of letters’), which enabled me to live or spend longer periods in Hungary, Denmark, New Zealand, France, the US, and the UK, where I have been living more-or-less permanently (my people, descended from seasonal transhumance pastoralists, are allergic to permanence) since 2015. It led me to a (second) PhD, in social theory, when I realised that no amount of travel is going to give an answer to “what is a good life” – ‘good’ understood not as satisfaction of (individual) needs, or the fulfillment of needs at all, but rather a life (human and non-human) worth living – but that maybe I could try and provide one. It also led to a lifelong engagement with and in social movements, collectives, and initiatives that seek to develop, test, and practice different forms of answers to (and sometimes different forms of) the same question.
I am currently Associate Professor at Durham University, where I have been since 2020. I have a number of other interests and engagements. Intellectually, I am interested in what we – as humans – can know, how the fact we’re human influences what we know, and how what we know influences what we do. This translates into an interest in sociology, philosophy, and anthropology, cognition, prediction, and agency, and social theory and epistemology. I also have a fascination with how humans relate to each other, and how we can ensure this happens in the least oppressive way possible. This, among other things, translates into an interest in ethics, politics, and policy. I am currently writing a book on the ethics of non-reciprocity (“Uncategorical imperatives”), based on my Leverhulme research fellowship 25-6.
When I don’t write, teach, or travel, or do research, most of my time is spent on thinking. Thinking and walking are among my favourite activities. Often in combination. I have been meditating, somewhat inconsistently, since I was 12, but have for some years now been undertaking a more systematic practice. This also means that I am thinking less and not thinking more.
Over the past year(s), I have been spending progressively more time away from urban environments. This means you can often find me in forests, assuming I want to be found.
I can get by in a few languages but tend to read, write and express myself in English.
I listen to music. Always when I’m travelling and often when I’m walking. Actually, there are very few activities I consider more pleasurable. I walk a lot. I also cycle, when I can. I live on the coast of the North Sea. I am a huge fan of the sea, even if in the form of oceans.
I read. Everything. You’ve been warned.
