Between 27 June and 1 July 2026, the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU (PS ZRC SAZU) will host an international study visit organised as part of the Erasmus+ CBHE project SacredTravels4Growth. We will host the project’s leading institution, Logos University, Tirana (Albania) and partners from various countries, including India (Banaras Hindu University, Karnatak University), the Republic of South Africa (North-West University, Venda University), Moldova (Ion Creangă National Pedagogical University, Moldova State University), Albania (POLIS University, European University of Tirana), Spain (University of Santiago de Compostela, USC International Courses), Greece (University of Piraeus), and Malta (University of Malta). Erasmus+ CBHE SacredTravels4Growth focuses on the meanings of pilgrimage-related practices and experiences, pilgrimage sites and associated landscapes, and heritage processes in the context of religious tourism.

 

The study visit will highlight the meaning of pilgrimage, both sacred and secular, and heritage-making practices by shedding light on the experiences, sensory and embodied realms of pilgrimages, as well as pilgrimage paths and pilgrims themselves. These topics will be explored through activities such as workshops, thematic seminars, visits to pilgrimage and heritage sites in Ljubljana, Radovljica and Brezje, a walking seminar to Šmarna gora, and a film screening followed by discussion.

 

A special welcome to the event that will take place on Monday, 29 June 2026, in the ZRC SAZU Gosposka Hall (Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana) from 9 am, featuring presentations by lecturers at the PS ZRC SAZU from three different study modules: Nataša Gregorič Bon and Maja Petrović-Šteger (Anthropology: Understanding World-Making Practices), Marjeta Pisk and Špela Ledinek Lozej  (Heritage and Heritage Processes in a Critical Perspective), Nataša Rogelja Caf and Martina Bofulin (Migration Studies and Heritage and Heritage Processes in a Critical Perspective).

 

At 4 pm will be a screening of the documentary film Common Roads: Pilgrimage and Backpacking in the 21st Century (2013, Tommi Mendel), followed by a short discussion.

 

 

The event is open to students, researchers, and the wider public.

 

The detailed programme of the entire study visit is available here.

 

Warmly welcome.

 

 

---

Detail of Triumph of Death, Camposanto, Pisa (Photo: Nataša Gregorič Bon)

You are cordially invited to attend the presentation of a doctoral dissertation topic within the framework of the doctoral programme (third cycle) Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures and the course requirements of Independent Research Work I and Independent Research Work III.

 

Abstracts of the presentations are available in the bolded dissertation titles below.

 

---

Dr Krešimir Dabo

Presentation of the doctoral dissertation prior to evaluation and defence:

 

Modul:	Interdisciplinary Study of Institutions and Society in the 21st Century – Politics, Economies, Technologies, Epistemologies
Dissertation title:	Art and Artists between Clickbait and Criticism: Media Narratives in the Contemporary Digital Environment
Mentor:	Prof. Dr Marina Gržinić Mauhler
Co-mentor:	Asst. Prof. Dr Boris Kern
Committee:	Asst. Prof. Dr Nina Cvar (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana), Dr Uroš Kranjc (Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU), Prof. Dr Lev Kreft (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana).
Date:	Friday, 12 June 2026 | 3 PM
Location:	Meeting Room ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 2, 1st Floor, Ljubljana

---

 

Important notice: The presentation will be held in English. Attendance by international and non-Slovene-speaking students counts towards the fulfilment of the course requirements of Research Seminar I (1st year) and Research Seminar II (2nd year).

 

Other interested members of the public are warmly welcome to attend.

Could Ljubljana, Vienna, Berlin and Hanover function as ’15-minute cities’ — urban environments where work, shopping, education, healthcare, recreation and other daily necessities are within walking or cycling distance?

 

The Anton Melik Geographical Institute – ZRC SAZU and the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU are pleased to invite you to a Geography Chat with Dr Björn Schwarze and Dr Klaus Spiekermann from S&W Urban and Regional Research in Germany. They will discuss the extent to which selected European urban regions facilitate the development of the 15-minute city, the population groups that benefit most from such spatial arrangements and those who remain dependent on cars.

 

Special emphasis will also be placed on the Ljubljana urban region. This will be followed by a presentation of an in-depth analysis titled ‘Can the 15-Minute City Work at the Regional Scale? The Case of the Ljubljana Urban Region” and a discussion.

 

When: 11 June, 10:00–13:00
Where: ZRC SAZU Atrium, Novi trg 2, Ljubljana
Language: English
Udeležba: brezplačna
Registration: https://1ka.arnes.si/Geoklepet6
Registration deadline: 4 June

 

You are also invited to join us for an informal chat with our guests over light refreshments after the event.

 

As space is limited, please RSVP by 4 June at the latest. You can access a detailed invitation via the link.

 

We look forward to seeing you there!

 

We are pleased to announce that the Department of Anthropology at the Institute for Anthropological and Spatial Studies (IAPS) of the ZRC SAZU is inviting applications for two fully funded research assistant posts as part of the international ERC Synergy project PLANETARY EEL.

 

The two research assistants will be employed at the IAPS, ZRC SAZU and simultaneously enrolled at the Postgradute School ZRC SAZU, in the module Anthropology Module: Understanding World-Making Practices. The positions are linked to research within the ERC Synergy Project ‘PLANETARY EEL: Planetary Anthropology and Care for Inter-species Connections: A Political Ontology of Human–Eel Relations’, which is led at ZRC SAZU by Associate Professor Nataša Gregorič Bon, PhD, who is also the coordinator of the doctoral module.

 

The research work will include fieldwork in the following areas:

 

• the Neretva Delta (Croatia) and the Vjosa Delta (Albania),
• and the Yarra River Delta in Melbourne (Australia).

 

The application deadline is 11 June 2026 at 23:59.

 

Further details regarding the call, eligibility criteria and application process can be found on the institute’s website:

https://iaps.zrc-sazu.si/en/novice/job-opportunities.

 

---

Photo: Eel habitat in the Vjosa

You are cordially invited to a lecture within the module Paleobiology and Sedimentary Geology, to be delivered by a visiting lecturer from Rey Juan Carlos University, currently hosted at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU as part of the Erasmus+ mobility programme Assoc. Prof. Ángela Fraguas Herráez, PhD:

 

Tiny fossils, big stories: what calcareous nannofossils reveal about past oceans, climates and high-energy events. 

 

Calcareous nannofossils are a cornerstone in both precise rock dating and the reconstruction of past oceanographic conditions and climatic changes. Their abundance, global distribution, rapid evolutionary rates, and excellent preservation make them powerful biostratigraphic markers, while their sensitivity to environmental variations provides key insights into past changes in temperature, productivity, salinity, and ocean chemistry. 

 

This lecture presents case studies from the Lower Jurassic of Spain that highlight the remarkable potential of these microscopic fossils. Biostratigraphic events, particularly the first occurrence of index species, allow high-resolution correlations and refined chronologies, even where other fossil groups are scarce. At the same time, shifts in calcareous nannofossil assemblages reflect the response of marine ecosystems to major environmental perturbations, including global warming episodes, linked to extinction events, and the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, through changes in species abundance and size. 

 

By integrating biostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental approaches, this talk demonstrates how calcareous nannofossils provide essential tools to unravel ocean dynamics, climatic changes, and high-impact events in Earth history, showing that tiny fossils can tell remarkably big stories. The lecture concludes with an outlook on a new research project investigating the presence of microfossils, such as nannofossils or diatoms, in coastal deposits from Atacama (Chile), in order to confirm their potential (paleo-)tsunamigenic origin and expanding the application of microfossils to the study of extreme depositional processes.  

 

The lecture will be held in English on Wednesday, 27 May 2026 at 4:00 PM in the Gosposka Hall of ZM GIAM ZRC SAZU, Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana. 

 

Ángela Fraguas is an Associate Professor of Geology at Rey Juan Carlos University (Spain). Her research focuses on both biostratigraphy and the response of calcareous nannoplankton to global environmental and climatic changes from the Late Triassic to the present. She holds a PhD in Geology from Complutense University of Madrid that received the Extraordinary Award for Best PhD Thesis. She has wide international experience, including a postdoctoral position at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, and research stays at the Natural History Museum, London, UK, and the University of Milan, Italy. She has authored over 25 peer-reviewed international publications, many in top-ranked journals, and has contributed extensively to conferences and to international, national, and regional research projects. She currently teaches a range of courses related to Geology and Paleontology in Biology, Environmental Sciences, and Experimental Sciences at the undergraduate level. She is actively involved in outreach activities and in educational Innovation projects that adapt contents of geology field practices to students with motor and hearing disabilities.  

 

---

Photo: Lotharingius sigillatus by Ángela Fraguas Herráez

We cordially invite you to a public lecture organised as part of the Memory and History course in cooperation with the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies by Prof. Ketevan Kakitelashvili, PhD:

 

Georgia After Independence: Memory of Trauma and Victory.

 

This lecture examines the political and social transformations in Georgia during the late 1980s and early 1990s, spanning the final years of the Soviet period and the first years of independence. The collapse of the communist system triggered rapid, comprehensive, and often traumatic social changes. While the restoration of Georgia’s independence in 1991 was a long-sought victory for which people fought, adapting to the ensuing changes proved profoundly challenging. The transitional period was marked by dramatic and painful events, including the tragedy of April 9, 1989, the 1991–1992 Tbilisi War and civil unrest, conflicts in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region, natural disasters, economic collapse, social hardship, and energy crises. The lecture applies theories of cultural trauma, the trauma of victory, and collective memory to the Georgian experience of the 1980s and 1990s. These frameworks help to understand the period’s events not merely as historical facts, but as culturally constructed phenomena shaped by meanings specific to Georgian society.

 

A focus will be placed on the everyday and individual dimensions of political, economic, and social transformations. The lecture explores how these changes affected ordinary people’s lives, identities, attitudes, and worldviews, and how the generation that lived through this period remembers and evaluates those years today. Using empirical material, it illustrates the emergence of a traumatic ethos in the 1990s: pervasive fear, despair, and feelings of loss and hopelessness as state institutions collapsed, crime surged, and social support structures faltered. It also examines the struggle of individuals to find their place and moral footing in a society whose previously shared values and principles no longer applied.

 

The lecture will be held in English, on Wednesday, 22 April 2026 at 1:00 PM in the Conference room of the Institute for Cultural and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU, Trg francoske revolucije 7, 2nd floor, Ljubljana.

 

Dr. Ketevan Kakitelashvili, PhD in History, is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Cultural Studies, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia). Her research focuses on mechanisms of identity formation, including collective memory, cultural trauma, and their impact on identity construction. Her publications include: Her publications include Georgia: Trauma and Triumph on the Way to Independence (Tbilisi: Samshoblo 2022, co-author), A national figure as a memory site: reinterpretations of Ilia Chavchavadze in the 1910s–1940s (Caucasus Survey, 9(3):220-234, co-author), Georgian Israelites or Jews of Georgia Religious and National Dimensions of the Georgian Jewish Identity (Journal of Religion in Europe 14, 3-4 (2021): 339-366).

 

---

Photo: pexels 

In cooperation with the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies and the Institute of Ethnomusicology, we cordially invite you to a public lecture by a guest from the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

 

Dr. Dave Wilson

 

on Wednesday, 15 April 2026 at 1:00 PM:

 

International Jazz Festivals, Blackness, and Sonic Negotiations of Europeanisation: Case Studies from the Skopje Jazz Festival.

 

This seminar focuses on the Skopje Jazz Festival (SJF, established in 1982), as a case study of international jazz festivals as sites of possibility and limitation for a liberatory and anti-imperialist politics. Taking examples from three chapters of the author’s monograph-in-progress Living Jazz on the Edge of Europe: Institutions and the Possibilities of a Liberation Music, the seminar is situated within a broader project concerned with discourses in Black Studies on possibilities and liberation, and considering jazz as a Black (American) music that has been global since before the word “jazz” was used to label the music. The chapters from which the seminar’s examples are drawn consider international jazz festivals as aesthetically, politically, and economically situated in regional networks of festival production. These festivals thus operate as sites of negotiation of multiple overlapping spheres of racial and gender politics, as well as, in the case of SJF, political processes of Europeanisation. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Macedonia between 2011 and 2018 forms the foundation of this work, where the author participated in jazz (and other) music worlds in Macedonia as a musician, audience member, educator, concert organiser, and ethnographer.

 

The first example discusses a case from the 2018 SJF, which featured an exhibit of African art on loan from the Museum of African Art in Belgrade, the first ever exhibition of African art in North Macedonia, which included narratives linking African art and jazz. The analysis of the exhibit includes some discussion of the Non-Aligned Movement as an element of the political and economic legacies of Yugoslavia (i.e., SFRY) that continue to inform conceptions and imaginations of Africa and blackness in North Macedonia. The second example focuses on the listening environments of three performances from the 2013 SJF: Roscoe Mitchell and Tyshawn Sorey, the band Harriet Tubman and Cassandra Wilson, and a concert titled “Balkan Fever” featuring Vlatko Stefanovski, Miroslav Tadić, Teodosii Spassov, and the Macedonian Philharmonic. Taken together, the modes of audience engagement with these performances raise questions about the conditions under which liberatory political possibilities are nurtured (or, alternatively, foreclosed) at the site of international jazz festivals.

 

A moment from the 2018 SJF grounds the third example, where a solo concert of trumpet player Wadada Leo Smith occurred simultaneously with a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by the Macedonian Philharmonic and with the first successful vote by the Macedonian Parliament in the process of changing the country’s constitutional name from the Republic of Macedonia to the Republic of North Macedonia. Considering these concurrent events, together with the other examples, reveals how a jazz festival can be a site for foregrounding the Black radical tradition and its broader emancipatory possibilities beyond a Black/White binary, even as it prioritises adherence to European forms of whiteness and participates in (and against) musical and political processes of Europeanisation.

 

The lecture will be held in English in the Conference Room of the Institute for Cultural and Memory Studies at ZRC SAZU, Trg francoske revolucije 7, 2nd floor.

 

Dave Wilson (he/him) is an interdisciplinary scholar, saxophonist, composer, ethnographer, producer, educator, and contributor to the music community of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. His research has appeared in journals including Journal of Jazz Studies, Environmental Humanities, Popular Music, Leonardo Music Journal, and Ethnomusicology, and his co-authored music appreciation textbook Gateways to Understanding Music (Routledge) was published in its second edition in 2023.

 

With music from his 2023 album Ephemeral, he was selected as a finalist for Best Jazz Artist at the 2024 Aotearoa Music Awards and for the 2024 APRA Best Jazz Composition Award. He appears regularly as a Music Correspondent on Radio New Zealand, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Music at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

 

---

Photo by cottonbro studio.

The Ivan Rakovec Institute of Palaeontology, in cooperation with the doctoral programme Environmental and Regional Studies (module Paleobiology and Sedimentary Geology), invites you to two public lectures,

 

on Tuesday, 14 April 2026 at 4:00 PM.

 

The guest lecturers will be Prof.  Attila Demény, PhD from the Institute for Geological and Geochemical Research, HUN-REN Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences in Budapest, and Assoc. Prof. László Bujtor, PhD from the Institute of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Eszterházy Károly Catholic University in Eger.

 

The event will be held in English in the Gosposka Hall of ZM GIAM ZRC SAZU, Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana.

 

 

---

Prof. Attila Demény, PhD
Institute for Geological and Geochemical Research, HUN-REN Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Budapest, Hungary.

 

Attila Demény graduated at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, as a geologist in 1986. He is dealing with stable isotope geochemistry since 1988, when he had a scholarship at the University of Utrecht, then he established a stable isotope laboratory in Budapest in 1990. He is dealing mainly with stable isotope analyses of various substances and environments from the Earth’s mantle to paleoclimate archives. He is an author of 170 journal articles and book chapters, and has received 5109 google scholar citations. He is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and was a director of the Institute for Geological and Geochemical Research, Budapest, from 2008 to 2026.

 

Why aptychi and rhyncholites are so good paleoclimate archives: microfabric features and geochemical compositions.

 

Oxygen isotope analysis of calcitic fossils is one of the most important tools for determining paleotemperatures, for which detection of primary textures and late-stage alterations is essential. I’ll present the results of EBSD measurements of internal structures of aptychi and rhyncholites and their mathematical analyses, as well as stable isotope analyses that demonstrate that well selected aptychi and especially rhyncholites can provide precise paleotemperature data. The studies have been published in International Journal of Earth Sciences (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00531-023-02376-5) and Communications Earth & Environment (https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02892-z).

 

 

---

Assoc. Prof. László Bujtor, PhD

Institute of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Eszterházy Károly Catholic University, Eger, Hungary

 

László Bujtor (b. 1965) geologist, graduated in 1989 Eötvös University, Budapest. László earned his PhD at the University of Pécs in 2007 and made habilitation there in 2016. He also gained experiences in the for-profit field working for multinational firms in marketing and sales roles and getting MBA in 2005 at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Technological University of Budapest.

 

Research field is palaeontology, including Mesozoic (chiefly Jurassic – Cretaceous) stratigraphy, palaeoecology, palaeobiogeography, and taxonomy of ammonites, brachiopods, crustacean microcoprolites. Main interest is the Mesozoic geology of the Mecsek Mountains (South Hungary) having also experiences from the Transdanubian Range and the Villány Mountains (Hungary), Northern Calcareous Alps (Austria), Cisnadioara (Southern Carpathians, Romania.

 

László is an associate professor at the Eszterházy Károly Catholic University (Eger, Hungary) from 202 and from 2024 promoted to a Head of Department. Before that he was working fof the University of Pécs (South Hungary) between 2013 and 2022.

 

László is an author of 177 papers (incl. scientific, popular scientific and fiction books/papers) out of which 50 are in English published in internationally acknowledged papers. Cumulative IF: 40.026, number of independent citation: 484, H-index: 12.

 

László is a co-curator of Komlóverzum Visitng Centre at Komló (Mecsek Mountains, South Hungary) and the scientific advisor of the institution.

 

Bouligand structure in Nature – universal application of a simple geometrical phenomenon

 

French biologist Yves Bouligand recognised a unique, hierarchical helical structure at the external cuticle of decapod crustaceans in 1972. The structure, which is the organisation of organic and non-organic (e.g., calcite) material of living creatures distribute outstanding mechanical properties to the material in which applied.

 

The structure today called ‘Bouligand structure’ after Yves Bouligand who discovered it. Later research prove the presence in far animal and even plant groups and revelaed its universal presence in Nature. First technological application occurred in 2024 by Rolls-Royce in airplane engine cover plates to strengthen the structure against unprecedented object impacts.

 

The presentation introduce the maverick science of Bouligad structure, its presence in Nature, possible human applications and the prospects in future material and natural science

 

---

Photo: SEM images of a cross-section of Laevaptychus. A – surface image obtained using the EBSD method. B – shows the crystallographic orientation of carbonate crystals. Source: Demény et al., 2025.

On 13 April at 6 pm, Eric Cazdyn (University of Toronto) will give a lecture at the Institute of Philosophy and the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU.

 

The lecture, dedicated to Fredric Jameson, will take place in the Atrium ZRC, Novi trg 2, Ljubljana.

 

Prior to the lecture, a preliminary presentation will be given of the Slovenian translation of Jameson’s lectures Years of Theory, forthcoming in June this year in the Philosophica moderna series. In this book, Jameson offers a wide-ranging and historically differentiated account of the development of modern French thought, tracing its key transformations from Sartre and existentialism through structuralism and post-structuralism to contemporary theoretical currents. The lectures do not merely provide a chronological overview, but also attempt a conceptual understanding of the internal dynamics of these shifts, consistently situating them within broader political and historical developments while examining their impact on the wider fields of the humanities and social sciences.

 

The Blindspot Machine: The Jameson Iteration

What is a blindspot? What might it teach us about how we look, how we think, how we desire, and how change occurs in the world? Cazdyn argues that the dominant ideology of the blindspot today (from culture to politics) as something missing, as something to be disclosed or concealed, is the deadliest weapon used by those in power. To develop this critique, Cazdyn has built what he calls a “Blindspot Machine”—a multi-camera optics system that, instead of exposing blindspots (the violent desire of state power), produces a new theory and practice of the blindspot itself. In this iteration of the Blindspot Machine project, Cazdyn will highlight how the work of Fredric Jameson informs and inspires the key problematics of the blindspot. Clips from a film that Cazdyn made with Jameson (not long before his death), will be screened as part of the lecture.

 

Eric Cazdyn is Professor of Aesthetics and Politics at the University of Toronto (Centre for Comparative Literature and Department of East Asian Studies), where he teaches courses on critical and cultural theory, psychoanalysis, Marxism, film, and architecture. He is the author of The Already Dead: The New Time of Politics, Culture and Illness (2012), After Globalization (with Imre Szeman, 2011), The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (2002), and Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism (with Marcus Boon and Timothy Morton, 2015), and the editor of Trespasses: Selected Writings of Masao Miyoshi (2010) and Disastrous Consequences (2007).

 

---

Photo by Kostas Dimopoulos

We invite you to a guest lecture organised as part of the doctoral module Cultural History by the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU and the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU.

 

Tamara Banjeglav, PhD, research associate at the Institute for Cultural and Memory Studies, ZRC SAZU:

 

Slow Violence and the Politics of Time: Delayed Reconstruction after the Petrinja Earthquake

 

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck central Croatia in December 2020, with its epicentre near the town of Petrinja, marking one of the most devastating natural disasters in the country’s recent history. While the initial event was sudden and highly visible — triggering emergency responses, media attention and government promises of rapid recovery — this presentation argues that the disaster cannot be understood only through its immediate material destruction. Rather, it is argued that delayed reconstruction, damaged infrastructure, bureaucratic obstacles, and institutional neglect have transformed time itself into a mechanism of violence. Drawing on Rob Nixon’s concept of “slow violence,” the presentation conceptualizes post-earthquake recovery as a temporally extended process in which harm unfolds gradually and often invisibly. In this context, waiting is not a neutral condition but a politically produced experience that exacerbates inequality and uncertainty.

 

The presentation attempts to answer the following research questions: how does slow violence manifest in the extended recovery process following the 2020 Petrinja earthquake? In what ways do bureaucratic delay, social neglect, and uneven reconstruction contribute to ongoing harm and injustice? By foregrounding the politics of time, the analysis shows that the effects of disaster persist not only in ruined buildings but in the protracted and uneven processes of rebuilding, through which vulnerability is reproduced rather than resolved.

 

The lecture will be held in English on Wednesday, April 8, 2026, at 1:00 p.m. in the library of the Institute for Cultural and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU, Trg francoske revolucije 7, 2nd floor, Ljubljana.

 

Tamara Banjeglav is a research associate at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She holds the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions ERA fellowship, in the framework of which she is conducting research on the project “Time is (not) on my side: Remembering victims of slow violence in a post-conflict and post-disaster setting”. She has received her PhD degree from the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests fall within the fields of memory studies, peace and conflict studies, nationalism studies, and transitional justice, particularly in the post-Yugoslav space.

 

---

Photo: Tamara Banjeglav