Safet HadžiMuhamedović is an anthropologist of landscape and religion, particularly interested in time and temporality, home, 'syncretic'; cosmologies, post-conflict spaces, nationalism, agency and affect. He has conducted most of his long-term fieldwork in Bosnia, with stints of research in the Basque Country and Palestine/Israel. His book Waiting for Elijah: Time and Encounter in a Bosnian Landscape (Berghahn, 2018) delves into the postwar echoes of cosmic/bodily encounters and syncretic seasonal celebrations in the southeastern Bosnian highlands.
Before attaining a doctoral degree in Social Anthropology from Goldsmiths, University of London and an MPhil degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, Dr HadžiMuhamedović has received BA degrees in History of Art and Sociology from the University of Sarajevo and Kenyon College.
Dr HadžiMuhamedović has also written on various other aspects of sacral landscapes, historicity and political agency of 'nonhuman' beings and ontological approaches to the question of home. For his reading of sacral landscapes in the archives of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, see 'Syncretic Debris: From Shared Bosnian Saints to the ICTY Courtroom' (Ethnoscripts, 2018). You can locate some of his visual anthropological research at www.bosnianlandscapes.com.
At the moment, Dr HadžiMuhamedović is preparing two co-edited volumes, Post- Home: Being and Belonging after Spatial and Temporal Alienation (with Marija Grujić, a Spring 2019 special issue of Ethnoscripts) and Chronotopic Materialities (with Dr Buchcyzk). He is also conducting preliminary investigations and setting up a fieldwork location in Popovo Polje, another stunning karst field in Bosnia, where he is looking into the social lives of a sinking river central to the cosmology of a landscape polarised by conflict and divided into two political entities.
Before returning to SOAS to convene the MA and BA modules in Anthropology of Gender, Dr HadžiMuhamedović has taught extensively at the University of Bristol, Goldsmiths, University of London and Goethe University Frankfurt. He has supervised undergraduate and postgraduate research projects at all stages. The courses he designed and taught between 2012 and 2019 include: Anthropology of Islam; Anthropology of Landscapes; Kinship; Social Theories; Encountering Gender and Religion: Theoretical and Methodological Implications; Anthropology of Religion; Politics, Economics and Social Change; Human Challenges; Anthropological Methods; Qualitative Methods and Case Study Research; Peoples, Culture and Language; Foundation Year in Arts and Humanities.
Publications
My Grandmother Drank the Qur’an: Liquid Readings and Permeable Bodies in Bosnia
Bosnian Sacral Geography: Ethnographic Approaches to Landscape Protection
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet (2012). In: Mallarach, Josep-Maria, (ed.), Spiritual values of protected areas of Europe : Workshop proceedings ; workshop held from 2-6 November 2011 at the International Academy for Nature Conservation on the Isle of Vilm, Germany. Bonn: Federal Agency for Nature Conservation = BfN Bundesamt für Naturschutz, pp 55-62
Thinking like Tumbleweeds: Bodily Genres and the Vitality of Beings at Large
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet, Heathcote, Gina, Hamzić, Vanja and Jones, Emily(2019). In: RAI2020: Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future, 4-7 June 2020 :SOAS University of London
Three Futures in a Distemporalised Bosnian Landscape
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2019). In: What Futures Belong to our Present? Anthropology on the Configurations of Imagination, 12-14 Sept 2019 :Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Hydrous Bodies, Fluid Domains: Thinking Gender beyond the Human
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet and Heathcote, Gina(2019). In: 61st Annual ISA Convention (Panel: Feminism and Materialism in Internaonal Relations), 25-28 March 2020 :Honolulu, Hawaii
Distemporalities: Collisions, Insurrections and Reorientations in the Worlding of Time
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet and Hamzić, Vanja(2019). In: On Time: Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 29–30 Aug 2019 :University of Helsinki
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet and Buchczyk, Magdalena(2018). In: ASA18: Sociality, Matter, and the Imagination: Re-creating Anthropology, 18-21 Sept 2018 :University of Oxford
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2017). In: Bristol Archaeology and Anthropology Research Seminar (BAARS), Feb 2017 :Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol
Chronotopic Yearnings: Home after Violence in Bosnia
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2017). In: Walls, Borders and Bridges: Law and Society in an Inter-Connected World, International Meeting, Law and Society Association, June 2017 :Mexico City, Mexico
Waiting to Wait: Time, Religion and Politics in a Bosnian Landscape
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2016). In: 'Time and Religion', Biennial Conference of the Society for the Anthropology of Religion, 15-17 May 2017 :Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Post-Home(Land): Being and Belonging after Spatial and Temporal Alienation
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet and Grujić, Marija(2015). In: Re-imagining Anthropological and Sociological Boundaries, International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) Inter-Congress, 15-17 July 2015 :Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand
Valleys, Myths and Territories: Bosnian town of Gacko between Cosmology and Violence
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2013). In: Evolving Humanity, Emerging Worlds: The 17th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 5-10 Aug 2013 :University of Manchester
Chronotopes or Elijah’s Pitfall: Sharing Life and Death in the Bosnian Town of Gacko
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2013). In: Thinking Memory through Space: Materiality, Representation and Imagination, 11-12 July 2013 :Goldsmiths, University of London
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2013). In: Evolving Humanity, Emerging Worlds: The 17th World Congress of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 5-10 Aug 2013 :University of Manchester
‘Thy Rod and Thy Staff, They Comfort Me’: Bosnian Narratives of Memory after Destruction
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2012). In: 'Uncertainty and Disquiet', Biannual Conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists, 10-13 July 2012 :Nanterre, France
The Tree of Gernika: Political Poetics of Rootedness and Belonging
HadžiMuhamedović, Safet(2011). In: ASA11: Vital Powers and Politics: Human Interactions With Living Things, 13-16 Sept 2011 :University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Lampeter