Brief Biography

Sanda Üllen holds a PhD degree from the Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology of the University of Vienna. In the past she worked on diverse projects, including research on e.g. representations and perceptions of migration(s) in Austrian school textbooks; family migration and integration; Multiculturalism, Gender Equality, Cultural Diversity and Sexual Autonomy; Impacts of refugee flows to territorial development in Europe. In her PhD, titled “Remembering home/house? Transnational families and the ambivalences of remembrance in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina”, through analysing transnational family networks between Bosnia and Scandinavia and their family home(s) and houses, she questions the dynamic interplay between what people remember and/or silence, how this influences and shapes their belongings and practices of emplacement and how different contexts and places (especially the family house) influence exactly how and what is being remembered. Through interconnections between theories of migration and theories of memory her work contributes to the emerging area of transnational memory studies.

Research Interests

Area: Southeastern Europe, Balkans, Bosnia and Hercegovina
Topics: memory, politics of belonging and identity, migration and transnational dynamics

Selected Publications

• Ambivalent Sites of Memories: The Meaning of Family Homes for Transnational Families. In Tosic/Palmberger "Memories on the move. Experiencing Mobility, Rethinking the Past". (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2016): 75-98
• Memories of Migration(s) in School, mit Markom, Christa. In: JERO (Journal for Educational Research Online) 2016, Vol. 8, Nr. 3: 122-141
• Familiengründungsmigration, Heiratsverhalten und Integration von Drittstaatsangehörigen in Österreich, gemeinsam mit Hofmann, Martin und Bilger, Veronika. (Wien: ICMPD 2015),
• Connecting Past and Future – Negotiating Present: Memories and belongings in post-war Sarajevo. In: Kamal, Noura, Eva Kössner, and Klaudia Rottenschlager (eds.): Past-Present-Fielwork: Anthropological Contributions at the Intersection of Memory, Power, and Culture. Conference Report Vienna Anthropology Days 2013. Austrian Studies in Social Anthropology, Sondernummer KSA-Tage 2013, Bd. 2, 37 p.
• Involving Pupils in Migration Research: Debating the ‚Other’ in Textbooks and Classrooms, mit C. Hintermann/C. Markom und H. Weinhäupl. In: JEMMS (Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society), Berghahn. 2014, Vol. 6, Nr. 1: 79-106
• ’Ich bin von hier und hier muss ich sein’ – Zugehörigkeit, Erinnerung und Gewalt im transnationalen Kontext am Beispiel bosnisch-herzegowinischer Jugendlicher. In: Aufwachsen im Ausnahmezustand. Sozialanthropologische Beiträge über Adoleszenz in Unsicherheit und Gewalt. Maria Six-Hohenbalken (Hg.). (Wien: Wiener Verlag für Sozialforschung 2013): 95-110