PhD Studentship

Anna Calori received a BA (Hons) in Contemporary History at University of Bologna (2011), followed by an MA in Identity, Culture and Power at the School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London (2012). Her Master’s dissertation, which obtained a distinction, analysed the political and social character of the Tuzla Municipality (in Bosnia-Hercegovina) as a non-nationalist enclave in the context of the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

She has long held a strong interest in the development of civil society in the region and has actively participated in development projects in Kosovo, working, for example, as a Project Assistant at the European Centre for Minority Issues, Kosovo in 2013.

Research

Her research will focus on the experience and understanding of economic transformation in states in the former Yugoslavia from a variety of transnational, national and local perspectives. It will analyse how multiple players – from World Bank economists and the European Union to local business elites to trade unions and workers’ groups – understood this transformation, and attempted to mobilise constituencies around certain visions of an economic future for the region. It is also centrally interested in the interactions between these different actors working in very different economic, political and cultural contexts.

More specifically, it will focus on the experience of privatisation within heavy industry in Kosovo and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The countries’ once widely numerous industrial workforce has been subjected to controversial and widely contested economic reforms; however, little attention has been given to the experiences of the subjects involved. This focus thus provides an interesting insight on issues of de-industrialisation and transition vis-à-vis an increasingly porous and fluid class identity.

Moreover, the presence of outside elites was particularly prominent in these cases: hence this research will offer a powerful example of where clashes between transnational, national and local actors take place.