New resident blogger Jelena Sofronijevic introduces their practice-based research and plans for the SGSAH platform…

Hello SGSAH community! My name is Jelena, and I am a producer, curator, writer, and researcher, working at the intersections of cultural history, politics, and the arts. My independent curatorial projects include exhibitions like Invasion Ecology (2024), SEEDLINGS: Diasporic Imaginaries (2025), and Can We Stop Killing Each Other? at the Sainsbury Centre (2025), and I produce EMPIRE LINES, a podcast which uncovers the unexpected flows of empires through art.

I am currently pursuing a practice-based PhD with Gray’s School of Art at Robert Gordon University (RGU) in Aberdeen, curating exhibitions of Balkan and Yugoslavian/diasporic artists in British art collections. I’m delighted to be working with Professor Jon Blackwood who, amongst many initatives, leads Rewind Yugoslavia: (1969 – 1991) with Dr. Laura Leuzzi and Adam Lockhart, an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded research project at Gray’s School of Art, with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJACD) in Dundee.

Much of my research centres on pluralising representations of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (CESEE)/diaspora communities and cultures, particularly from the Balkans and Yugoslavia, and more constructive, contemporary histories of non-alignment. More widely, I seek to platform lived experiences and perspectives often marginalised or excluded from representation, especially in anti-colonial and environmental activism. During my residency, the SGSAH Blog will have a new regular strand platforming researchers working with ecologies, as well as a number of collaborative and contributor posts.

In my practice, I seek to make complex questions in culture, history, and politics accessible, not simple. I am not from a conventional arts/history background, which informs my unique approach. I was brought up in a diaspora community in a small, working-class town in the Midlands, and first studied Politics (MA) at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, building experience, knowledge, and relationships independent of typical institutional recognition. Through EMPIRE LINES and my extended practices, I work with artists, curators, historians, and writers in very different contexts. This constellation of collaborators (and close friends!) expand, unsettle, and provoke my own thinking and actions. Likewise, I consider education a lifelong endeavour, learning about cultures through travel, and critical engagement with museums, galleries, and different approaches to curation. As such, I hope to use the SGSAH blog to platform researchers from different backgrounds, disciplines, and approaches beyond strict academia.

You can follow the SGSAH Blog and social media for new posts every Tuesday.

I welcome ideas for posts, submissions, and proposals for collaborations, so please do get in touch.

Jelena Sofronijevic (@empirelinespodcast) is a producer, curator, writer, and researcher, working at the intersections of cultural history, politics, and the arts. Their full portfolio is available on their website and Instagram.