Short Biography

Roman studied social and cultural anthropology at the University of Vienna and sociology at Charles University, Prague. His master’s thesis explored state forestry through historically informed ethnographic fieldwork in rural Slovakia. The work shed light on mutually entangled processes of de- and re-valuation of state foresters’ work and, simultaneously, on different value forms re-negotiated within and beyond present-day forest politics. As part of the interdisciplinary doc.funds doctoral programme “The Dynamics of Change and the Logics of Transformation: State, Society, and Economy at Critical Junctures”, Roman will conduct his PhD research on social work as (relationally) transforming the state in eastern Bulgaria. Accordingly, his main research interests include the anthropology of the state, care, value(s), the re-production of socio-economic inequalities and (“post”-socialist) state transformations.

Dissertation Project

Transforming the State through Social Work in Burgas, Bulgaria

Supervisor: Tatjana Thelen

My PhD project ethnographically investigates social work practices and relations to understand (relational) state transformations in Burgas, Bulgaria. It focuses primarily on social workers-in-training within both state and non-state domains to explore learned expertise as a situated, contested practice, leading to particular re-productions of "the state" as a relational and processual entity. Morally-laden negotiations of deservingness, needs and obligations as central elements of the social services provision for state citizens are central to grasp these "transformative" processes and their broader consequences. Relatedly, the production of difference and exclusion (rather than solely positive inclusion) through such care practices is observed to gain nuanced insights into possible non-linear state constellations.

My project is part of the interdisciplinary doc.funds doctoral programme "The Dynamics of Change and the Logics of Transformation: State, Society, and Economy at Critical Junctures", which aims to critically develop Karl Polanyi's seminal work The Great Transformation to come up with a new understanding of past and present transformation processes in (former) socialist countries.