Biography

Miladina Monova earned a PhD in Social Anthropology in 2002 from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris; she also holds a DEA in the same discipline and a Master's degree in Sociology from Paul-Valéry University in Montpellier.

After gaining research and teaching experience in France, Greece, Hungary, and Germany, she joined the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 2017, where she has served as chief assistant professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, within the “Knowledge Society: Science, Education, and Innovation” section, since 2019. Since February 2022, she has also been teaching ethnology in the Department of History at Sofia University. Notably, she was a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany from 2009 to 2012. Her current research focuses on topics such as domestic economies and the environment (labor and relationships to the commons); urban/rural and industrial/agrarian hybridization; human relationships to various bodies of water, infrastructure, and local identity; processes of commodification and resistance; as well as war refugees, memory, and the political uses of the past. Her fieldwork and research have taken place in Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, and France.

Collaboration with EVS

Miladina Monova’s stay at ENS de Lyon will strengthen scientific collaboration between the UMR EVS and Bulgarian researchers on water-related issues. Already involved in several joint projects with geographers and anthropologists from the laboratory, she will help deepen these exchanges and expand the existing scientific network.

Her visit will be primarily devoted to preparing a European Research Council (ERC) research project involving French and Bulgarian partners. This project will focus on the uses and perceptions of thermal water, as well as its socioeconomic, cultural, heritage, and environmental implications. The goal is, in particular, to study—from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective—the interactions between societies, natural environments, and the ways in which this resource is managed.

This collaboration aligns with the UMR EVS’s research priorities, particularly those focused on socio-hydrosystems and inequalities, and will help strengthen its international outreach. It also aligns with the internationalization goals of the H2O University Research School and the discussions taking place across the Lyon-Saint-Étienne academic site regarding global challenges and regional contexts.

During her stay, Miladina Monova will present her work at several seminars hosted by ENS de Lyon and the UMR EVS, as well as part of the Master’s program in European and International Studies. She will also participate in the International Geography Festival in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, thereby helping to disseminate research findings to a wider audience.

Major publications

• Monova, M. (024. The Korova Bath: Ethnography of a Communal Institution. (in Bulgarian) Seminar BG: 27, ISSN (online):1313-9932 
• Segond, R., Monova, M. 2023. Between domestication and commodification: Mineral water, infrastructures, and tensions in the hydrosocial cycle of Velingrad (Bulgaria), (in Bulgarian) Антропология/Anthropology. Journal for Socio–Cultural Anthropology, 10(2), South-West University “Neofit Rilski”, Blagoevgrad, 9-45 
• Monova, M. 2021. The possibilities of memory: Resurrecting communist memories from the Greek Civil War in North Macedonia, p. 97–105. In Cultures and Politics of Remembrance: Southeast European and Balkan Perspectives, ForumZFD/Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje  
• Monova, M. 2015. “We don’t have work. We just grow a little tobacco”: Household economy and Ritual effervescence in a Macedonian town, 160-190. In Economy and Ritual in Postsocialist Times, Stephen Gudeman and Chris Hann, eds., Berghahn, New York/Oxford.