Robert M. Hayden and Mario Katić will present findings from the research project “(Re)Constructing Religioscapes as Competing Territorial Claims in Post-War Bosnia & Herzegovina,” which has examined the postwar development of religious and memorial landscapes in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2018. While the destruction of religious buildings during the 1992–1995 war has been widely documented, the project focuses on the less-studied question of what was restored, rebuilt, or newly constructed after the war.

Drawing on ethnographic, historical, and spatial research, the speakers analyze networks of Orthodox and Catholic churches, mosques, socialist monuments, and postwar memorials as material markers of presence, dominance, and competing territorial claims. The lecture will introduce concepts developed through the project, including ethnic archipelagos, infrastructure-based communities, and the sedimentation and erosion of time in urban landscapes. Through examples from different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hayden and Katić will show how Ottoman, socialist, wartime, and postwar layers intersect in contemporary space and what these transformations reveal about a society that is postwar but not yet post-conflict.

The lecture will be held in English and will be followed by a discussion with the audience.

Robert M. Hayden (JD, PhD) is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Law at the University of Pittsburgh and an anthropologist of law and politics. For more than three decades, his research has focused on the Balkans, including Yugoslav socialism, nationalism, violence, constitutionalism, state reconstruction, transitional justice, and competing uses of religious sites. He is the principal investigator and project leader.

Mario Katić is Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnology and Anthropology at the University of Zadar. His research interests include pilgrimage, folklore studies, the anthropology of death, urban anthropology, and ethnographic methodology. He is the associate project leader and leads the University of Zadar component.

The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Ljiljana Pantović, Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade.

The research was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Cultural Anthropology Program (grant no. 1826892), with institutional support from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Zadar.

Learn more about the project: Bosnia Sacred Sediments