Marko Zivkovic, PhD

Email

zivkovic@ualberta.ca

Address

13-28 Tory (H.M.) Building

11211 Saskatchewan Drive NW

Edmonton AB

T6G 2H4

I was born and raised in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia where I graduated in Clinical Psychology from the University of Belgrade. I also studied Japanese in Belgrade and I went to The University of Chicago to study anthropology in 1989 with the idea of doing research in Japan. I spent a year (1992-93) at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama preparing to do fieldwork in Japan, but midway through my stay I decided to switch from Japan to Yugoslavia on account of the war that started there in 1991. My PhD dissertation at The University of Chicago was about the "stories Serbs tell themselves (and others) about themselves," and it was eventually published as Serbian Dreambook: National Imaginary in the Time of Milošević, by the Indiana University Press in 2011. I have expanded my interests from Serbia and Southeast Europe, symbolic geographies of European margins and post-socialist studies to anthropology of art and intersections of art and science. I have a long interest in the modalities of collaboration and mutual illumination between artists and anthropologists inspired primarily through my own collaborations with my late wife Gordana Zivkovic. Most recently these interests led me to develop an innovative program aimed at systematically honing the "ethnographic sensibility" through exercises partly based on training in various arts. I have been practicing Aikido for over 30 years and intend to develop a way of teaching aimed at dancers. I am an avid photographer and an amateur cinematographer (or rather, a dabbler in film and video). Last but not the least, I consider myself a ramen connoisseur. 

• Anthropology of Art and Science (esp. neuroscience)

• History, sociology and philosophy of science

• Social life of things

• Ethnography of the Balkans, Mediterranean, East/Central Europe and Japan

• Symbolic and performative dimensions of politics

• Ethnography of socialism and post-socialism

• Anthropology of time & space

• Dreams

• History of anthropology

• General social theory

Together with Dr. Lisa Feder I developed a method for teaching "ethnographic sensibility" that draws on art and mindfullnes. It was first tested in the School for Ethnographic Sensibility in Belgrade, June 2015. Under the new name, Fieldschool for Ethnographic Sensibility, it will be taught again in Belgrade in 2016. For more information, check also the U of Alberta International Study Abroad page.