Research interests
social theory, cultural sociology, postsocialism, urban sociology, collective memory
Biography
Ivana Spasić earned her BA, MA and PhD degrees in sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. After working as researcher at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, she joined the Department of Sociology in 2003, teaching courses in social theory and cultural sociology at undergraduate and graduate levels. She has received advanced training from the University of Warsaw and the CEU, and has been a visiting scholar at the Maison des sciences de l’homme, CERI-Sciences Po (Paris) and Yale University, where she has been a Center for Cultural Sociology Faculty Fellow since 2009. She has also taught at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade, Faculty of Political Science in Sarajevo, Academy of Music in Zagreb, Institute of Sociology of the Jagellonian University in Krakow, and Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, and currently is a visiting professor at the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade and Center for Interdisciplinary studies, University of Sarajevo. For her book Kultura na delu she won the 2013 Vojin Milić Award. Spasić has been the editor in chief of the leading Serbian sociology journal Sociologija and a member of editorial boards of several national and international journals (at present, the American Journal of Cultural Sociology and Dialogues in Sociology). She is a member of the European Sociological Association, International Sociological Association and the Serbian Association for Legal and Social Philosophy, while she has been president of the Sociological Scientific Society of Serbia since 2023. In the 2024-2027 term she is the chair of the Department of Sociology.
Selected publications
Spasić, I. (2025). The recurrence of patriotic outbidding: contemporary Serbian nationalism. In: Baldi, G. (ed.). The New Politics of Nationalism in Contemporary Europe, Agenda Press, (71–91).
Spasić, I., Pešić, J. & Babović, M. (2022). Sociology in Serbia: A Fragile Discipline. Palgrave Macmillan.
Spasić, I. (2019). Društvena konstrukcija stvarnosti i konstrukcionizam: nesporazum koji to (možda) nije. [The Social Construction of Reality and constructionism: A misunderstanding which (perhaps) isn’t one],Glasnik Etnografskog instituta SANU 67(1): 15–32.
Spasić, I. (2017). The universality of banal nationalism, or, Can the flag hang unobtrusively outside a Serbian post office? In: Skey, M. & Antonsich, M. (eds.). Everyday Nationhood: Theorising Culture, Identity & Belonging After Banal Nationalism, Palgrave (31–51).
Spasić, I. Backović, V. (2017). Gradovi u potrazi za identitetom. [Cities in search of
identity]. Beograd: ISI FF.
Spasić, I. (2013). Kultura na delu: društvena transformacija Srbije iz burdijeovske perspektive. [Culture at work: The social transformation of Serbia from a Bourdieusian perspective]. Beograd: Fabrika knjiga.
Spasić, I. (2011). The trauma of Kosovo in Serbian national narratives. In: Eyerman, R., Alexander, J. & Butler Breese, E. (eds.). Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers (81–105).
Selected presentations
Resanović, M. & Spasić, I. ’This Exam Can’t Be Retaken’: Visual Materials and Civil Repair in Serbia’s Student Protests. Civil sphere Theory Working Group Meeting 2025, University of Vienna, October 22–24, 2025.
Spasić, I. Computerization under Sanctions: The Case of the Belgrade University Computing Center. Conference Revisiting the Systemic Change of the 1990s: Sources and Methods for Fieldwork in Postsocialist Europe, INALCO, Paris, June 3–4, 2025.
Spasić, I. Sociologija i književnost – beleške o jednom ambivalentnom srodstvu. [Sociology and Literature: Notes on an Ambivalent Affinity]. Conference Antropologija književnosti, umetnosti i medija [Anthropology of Literature, the Arts and Media], Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade, December 22–23, 2023.
Petrović Trifunović, T. & Spasić, I. Revisiting the discourse of Third Serbia: Us vs. Them deconstructed or recomposed? International conference Sociological Perspectives on Contemporary Post-Yugoslav Societies, Sociological Scientific Society of Serbia/IFDT, Belgrade, May 26–27, 2023.
Spasić, I. Superfluous Legacy: The Limits of Sociology as Social Critique in a Devastated Postsocialist Society. 13th ESA Conference (Un)Making Europe: Capitalism, Solidarities, Subjectivities, Athens, August 29 – September 1, 2017.
