Ana Vilenica
Affiliated researcher
My work is situated at the intersection of human geography, ethnography, social movement studies and political ecology.
Social Sciences
I am an Associate Research Professor in Ethnography and Anthropology at the University of Belgrade, Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, and an affiliate Senior Research Fellow at Södertörn University. My work is situated at the intersection of critical urban studies, human geography, political economy, political ecology, ethnography, feminist theory, and social movement research. I focus on housing struggles, urban commons, extractivism, and feminist approaches to social reproduction, with particular attention to the post-socialist and semi-peripheral contexts of Eastern Europe, the UK and Americas.
Key research interests
- Housing and urban commons: financialization of housing, social housing, housing and racialisation, tenant organizing, housing precarity, migrant housing, anti-eviction struggles, and collective forms of inhabiting the city.
- Urban regeneration and the role of art and culture: art and housing struggles, artwashing, art property guardianship, squatting in culture, and militant art.
- Extractivism and anti-extractivist movements: green extractivism, infrastructural violence, resistance to extractivism, and new approaches to human–nature relations.
I have conducted empirical studies in Serbia, the UK, Canada, the US, Mexico, Argentina, and Uruguay. My research combines theoretical work with engaged, movement-oriented methodologies. I am particularly interested in how economic, housing, ecological, and political crises reshape everyday life and open new spaces for collective action.
I have examined the transformation of housing regimes in post-socialist contexts, the financialization of housing, and the rise of tenant and anti-eviction movements. I have also worked on questions of urban inequality, displacement, and the politics of care and internationalism, analyzing how movements develop collective infrastructures of survival and resistance under conditions of austerity, neoliberal reform, autocracy, and extractivism across borders.
Ongoing research projects
My current research focuses on mining and green extractivism in Serbia and infrastructures of engagement in times of crisis. I am part of the international research program Sustaining Civil Society in the Context of Multiple Crises External link., which focuses on social movements in post-collectivist contexts, including Poland, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, the Czech Republic, and Sweden.