Department of Anthropology and Sociology

Dr Safet HadžiMuhamedović

Key information

Roles
Department of Anthropology and Sociology Senior Teaching Fellow Centre for Ottoman Studies Associate Member
Qualifications
BA Hons - History of Art (Sarajevo), BA Hons - Sociology (Sarajevo), MPhil - Social Anthropology (Cantab), PhD - Social Anthropology (Goldsmiths)
Building
Russell Square: College Buildings
Office
569
Email address
sh113@soas.ac.uk
Support hours
Mondays: 15:30-17:30 (by appointment)

Biography

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

Contact Safet