Research interests:

• Social history
• Gender history
• History of Yugoslavia
• State socialism
• Oral history

Current research projects:

In 2024 I am engaged at RECET in preparing a project application examining the Yugoslav secret police in late socialism, from a social history perspective based on recently declassified archival documents. I also work on two ongoing research projects. The first, “To the Northwest! Intra Yugoslav Albanian migration (1953-1989)” is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, P32345). It explores Albanian labour migration within socialist Yugoslavia examining the experiences of ethnic minority, private sector entrepreneurs in a state socialist context through an intersectional lens. The project is based at the University of Graz and shall conclude later in 2024 and forms the basis for my Habilitation dissertation: Socialist entrepreneurs: Intra-Yugoslav Albanian labour migration in Croatia (Further details). The second project, “A Socialist Workplace in Postcolonial Africa: A Connected History of the Yugoslav Workforce In Zambia”, is led by Dr. Goran Musić at the Research Platform for the Study of Transformations and Eastern Europe, University of Vienna. Also funded by the FWF (P34980), the study examines socialist Yugoslav companies’ workforces in postcolonial Zambia. It connects class, labour, and race into studies of the Yugoslav region’s ambiguous relationship to the Global South through the lens of social history (Further details).

Selected publications

Rory Archer,“Albanian labor migration, the Yugoslav private sector and its Cold War context”, Labor History 64, 4 (2023): 425-442. https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2180625

Rory Archer, Sara Bernard & Yannis G.S. Papadopoulos. “Introduction: the Cold War of labour migrants: opportunities, struggles and adaptations across the Iron Curtain and beyond”, Labor History 64, 4 (2023): 321-329. https://doi.org/10.1080/0023656X.2023.2227600

Rory Archer, “Inside the factory, outside the party-state. The agency of Yugoslav women workers in late socialism (1976-1989)” in Eloisa Betti, Silke Neunsinger, Leda Papastefanaki, Marica Tolomelli, Susan Zimmermann (eds), Women, Work and Agency. Organizing and activism around the world in the long 20^th century (Budapest: CEU Press, 2022), 167-185 https://www.academia.edu/114894527/Inside_the_Factory_Outside_the_Party_state_The_Agency_of_Yugoslav_Women_Workers_in_Late_Socialism_1976_1989_

Rory Archer & Goran Musić. “New perspectives on East European Labor History: an Introduction”, Labor: Studies in Working Class History 17, 3 (2020): 19-29. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-8349332