Plenary Speakers 2024
About the Plenary Speaker
Tanja Petrović is a principal research associate at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU and professor of the ZRC SAZU Graduate School. She is interested in the uses and meanings of socialist and Yugoslav legacies in post-Yugoslav societies, as well as in linguistic, cultural, political, and social processes that shape the reality of these societies. She is the author and editor of several books and a number of articles and essays in the fields of linguistic anthropology, anthropology of post-socialism, memory studies, masculinity, gender history, heritage studies, and labor history. Amongst them are Yuropa: Yugoslav Legacy and Politics of Future in Post-Yugoslav Societies (Fabrika knjiga 2012), an edited volume Mirroring Europe: Ideas of Europe in Europeanization in Balkan Societies (Brill Publishing 2014), Serbia and its South: “Southern Dialects” between language, culture and politics (Fabrika knjiga 2015), as well as Utopia of the Uniform: Affective Afterlives of the Yugoslav People’s Army (forthcoming with Duke University Press).
About the Plenary Speaker
Dr Martina Topić is an associate professor in public relations leadership at the University of Alabama, College of Communication and Information Sciences, Department of Advertising and PR. She is an author and a lead of the EUPRERA research network 'Women in PR' and the Comms Women initiative. Before relocating to the United States, Martina worked at Leeds Beckett University in the UK (2014-2023) where she held several roles including her latest role as a reader at Leeds Business School. She was a research lead for the WECAN project (Women Empowered through Coaching and Networking) funded by the European Social Fund and the Department for Work and Pensions (2020-2023). She is editor-in-chief of two international journals, Corporate Communications: An International Journal (Emerald) and Northern Lights: Film & Media Studies Yearbook (Intellect) and editor-in-chief of the book series, Women, Economy and the Labour Relations (Emerald). She is a member of the British Sociological Association (BSA) and EUPRERA.
About the Plenary Speaker
Ana Kocić Stanković currently works as an Associate Professor of American and African American Studies and American Literature at the English Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš, Serbia. Besides teaching courses in American and African American literature, history and culture, she has authored a textbook The African American Experience: An Introduction (2021) and a number of papers in national and international academic journals. She is also acting president of the Serbian Association for Anglo-American Studies (UASS) and a member of The European Association for American Studies (EAAS). She is the alumna of the 2023 SUSI – Study of U.S. Institutes for Scholars program of the U.S. Department of State and University of Montana.