This anthropological project extends theorising on Vienna as a “post-Yugoslav city”, interrogating its historic and contemporary role as a post-Yugoslav research city (Tyll-Schranz 2023, Živadinović 2022). It asks how Vienna emerged as a contemporary hub for post-Yugoslav research, and how does the post-Yugoslav academic community experience the city, at both affective and material levels?

The first part of this project traces the entangled histories that led to Vienna’s emergence as a hub for post-Yugoslav research, up to the present day. The second part uses ethnographic methods including interviews, participant observation and workshops to explore the lived experience of the city’s sizeable academic community of researchers in the humanities and social science who work on the post-Yugoslav region. The significance of this community is reflected in the range of institutions, as well as the many informal networks, conferences and research groups focused on the post-Yugoslav and Balkans region.

By examining the intersection between post-Yugoslav migrant communities and knowledge production in Vienna, this project therefore addresses a research gap in urban anthropology, migration studies and higher education research. Some authors acknowledge Vienna’s historic role as a centre for the field variously known as Balkan Studies, South-East European Studies and Slavic Studies (Mishkova 2017). There is also substantial scholarship on experiences of Vienna’s post-Yugoslav community, however the academic community remains relatively absent in these accounts, although its importance as an education is highlights by some authors (Fischer-Nebmaier 2007; Tyll-Schranz 2023; Mijić 2020, Živadinović 2022).

The project seeks to acknowledge the valuable role that migration can play in a city’s knowledge economy, recognising how post-Yugoslav research enriches Vienna’s intellectual landscape. It takes a “post-migration” approach, that honours the heterogeneity and diversity of migrant populations, while taking migration as an inevitable feature of our social worlds (Dahinden 2016). It acknowledges the historic transnational entanglements between Vienna and the Yugoslav region can be considered as circuits of knowledge production, challenging ideas of centre/periphery and East/West (Vezenkov 2017), which have particular relevance with the ongoing narratives regarding Europeanisation within the post-Yugoslav region.

Recognising the contribution of migrants in this way also serves an important political purpose, in a time of anti-migration discourse. Ultimately, the project will provide the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the City of Vienna with valuable insights into the experience of post-Yugoslav migrants within the city’s academic community, and how to support, sustain to grow this important part of the city’s knowledge economy.