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. Roman is a PhD candidate in the doc.funds project  “The Dynamics of Change and Logics of Transformation: State, Society, and Economy at Critical Junctures”.

Research Interests:

• Anthropology of the State
• Care
• Values and Moralities
• Socio-Economic Inequalities and Difference
• "Post"-Socialist Transformations

Current Research Project:

Transforming the State through Social Work with Elderly in Bulgaria

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a state-run elderly care facility in eastern Bulgaria, Roman’s doctoral project examines the ways in which social work practices and relations transform the state. Focusing primarily on social workers as street-level bureaucrats, it seeks to understand how these actors re-produce and transform “the” state as a processual rather than static entity within the everyday contexts of their care work with elderly. Morally-laden negotiations of deservingness, needs and obligations as central elements of the social services provision for state citizens are crucial to grasp the transformative processes and their broader consequences. Relatedly, experiences and competing visions of old age are observed to gain nuanced insights into potential non-linear state constellations and the meaning of (“good”) aging in them.