Ognjen Kojanic

OGNJEN KOJANIĆ, University of Cologne, received a grant in April 2021 to support research on “Drain the Swamp: Infrastructure, Political Economy, and Human-Environment Relations in Belgrade Wetlands.” This project examined human-environment relations as shaped materially by infrastructural projects that, in turn, align with goals and promote values that reflect the political-economic regimes under which they are developed. The empirical focus of the research was (formerly) wetland landscapes in Belgrade, the largest city in and capital of Serbia. Four major political-economic periods over the course of the century (from WWI to the 2020s) were identified by analyzing secondary literature, archival and contemporary sources, and interviews and ethnographic data. The project developed the analytic of volume as a novel approach to better understand the interface of infrastructure and environmental politics in the era of anthropogenic climate change.