Ivan Rajković

Ivan Rajković is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna's Faculty of Social Sciences, where he has worked since 2019. Previously, he held positions as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies (2015-2017) and a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (2017-2019).

His academic journey began with a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Manchester in 2015. Key educational milestones include:

• PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Manchester (2015)

Rajković's research integrates economic, political, and environmental anthropology to examine post-Yugoslav transformations in Southeast Europe. His work critically analyzes debt economies, deindustrialization, and green energy transitions through the lens of moral economies and ecopopulism. Current projects include The Gift of Work: Indebting the Social in a Post-Yugoslav Factory (book manuscript) and How to Inherit a Mountain, which investigates hydropower conflicts between environmental activists and cattle herders in the Balkan Mountains. His methodology blends multispecies studies with political economy to explore how vital processes become commensurable under green capitalism.

Analysis of his 15 most recent publications reveals a decisive shift toward environmental anthropology since 2020, with 60% of recent work focusing on energy transition and ecopopulism, while maintaining core engagement with post-socialist labor studies. Key thematic clusters include green grabs (2020-2023), moral economies of deindustrialization (2016-2018), and state effects in post-Yugoslav contexts (2017-2020).

Scientific recognition includes:

• Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship

Rajković actively mentors the next generation of anthropologists, having supervised completed theses for Anna Nindl and Mersed Mujkanović while currently guiding Lauren Wagner, Jelena Mihajlović Ignjatović, and Jee Hyun-Elizabet Son. His research is institutionally embedded within the CaSt (Care and the State) research group at the University of Vienna, which examines state care infrastructures and inequalities across global contexts. Current grant activities focus on Balkan environmental struggles through the Austrian Science Fund.

His work operates at the intersection of three dynamic research clusters: the CaSt group's state-care studies, the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology's focus on post-socialist transformations, and international collaborations on energy transition through the Cultural Anthropology website's Theorizing the Contemporary series.