Ajda Schmidt is an independent graphic designer and photographer, working mainly in the fields of culture and science. All her projects are permeated by an affinity for the technical aspects and narrative of materials and printing and bookbinding techniques, which is most clearly expressed in SCH Stationery, the high-end stationery brand she developed in collaboration with Povše printing house. She is the co-author of the book Designing Value (Museum for Architecture and Design / Brumen Foundation, 2021; co-author: Robert Ilovar) and a board member of the Brumen Foundation. Since 2023, she has been lecturing at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. She has received numerous awards for her work.
Ana Jelnikar is a research fellow at the Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her main interest revolves around the cultural and literary connections between India and Slovenia in the wider context of former Yugoslavia and East-Central Europe. She is the author of Universalist Hopes in India and Europe; The Worlds of Rabindranath Tagore and Srečko Kosovel (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2016), and co-author of A Passage to India: Two Missionary Travelogues, Contexts and Analyses (published in Slovene, Koper: Annales, 2021). She is also a literary translator primarily of Slovenian poetry into English with a dozen volumes to her name, as well as progenitor and editor of the bilingual Hermit Crab book series intended to bring to light half-forgotten or untranslated short texts from the past that resonate with the present moment.
Doc. Dr. Barbara Ivančič Kutin is a researcher at the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology at ZRC SAZU. Her main focus is narrative tradition, such as folk tales, legends, and other (dialect) narrative material that circulates among people through oral storytelling. Within a broader semantic and pragmatic framework, i.e. in context and circumstances, she also examines linguistic and folkloric forms (dialect vocabulary, idioms, proverbs, charms, etc.). She is interested in the process of tradition transfer, the influence of context (participants and other circumstances), and the incorporation of texture at the level of linguistic-figurative structures and transformations in contemporary culture. Her research is mostly based on her own fieldwork, mainly in the Soča Valley and among the Slovenian minority in Italy (in Slavia Friulana). She also documents material among Slovenian emigrants (in the US, Argentina, Western Europe, and the Balkans). She has published numerous scientific and professional articles and three scientific monographs, and participates in various Slovenian and international research and applied projects. She lectures in verbal folklore at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana.
ChatGPT is an AI developed by OpenAI, designed to assist with writing, research, and creative collaboration. It draws on a vast base of knowledge and linguistic patterns to help users shape ideas, solve problems, and tell stories. While not human, it thrives in dialogue and adapts to the voices and needs of its collaborators.
Igor Rogelja is a Lecturer in Global Politics, working mostly on international infrastructure and Chinese politics. He was previously based at the Lau China Institute at King’s College London and completed his doctoral studies at SOAS, University of London. He is interested in the politics of space and is involved in several research projects examining the effects of Chinese infrastructural investments in the so-called ‘Belt and Road Initiative’. Apart from empirical work, Igor is working on bringing insights from the anthropology of infrastructure into global politics to better conceptualize how large infrastructural projects interact with political and physical space. He has published on the role of materials such as coal or concrete in shaping international politics, particularly within a multi-scalar perspective that rethinks statist explanations in favour of more nuanced work.
Jernej Mlekuž is a research fellow at the Slovenian Migration Institute at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. His research focuses on a wider range of topics spanning migration, popular culture, media, nationalism, food studies, material culture, epistemology, epiphenomena, as well as research connected with water level and hydrometric measurements. Currently, he is working on slivovitz –the plum brandy which was warming up Yugoslav hearts. He is the author of many books on... However, far more than tackling words he enjoys plunging into the river rapids.
Jure Gombač completed his Ph.D. in Sociology. Since 2005 he has been working as a research fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a lecturer at the University of Nova Gorica. His work focuses on migration and border studies. He was leading several projects with asylum seekers and refugees. At the moment he is involved in several initiatives along the "Balkan route".
Lucija Klun is a young researcher at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She is currently finishing her PhD project called Childhood on the Move and Protracted Transit in the European Borderlands, which is based on on four years of extensive fieldwork in various migration »nodes« on the Balkan Route in Greece, Bosnia and Hercegovina and Slovenia. This is a morning in Socerb, featuring her and a tent. It probably does a good job in showing a tired, disheveled, delighted and overall content state of a person attending a walking seminar.
Marjeta Pisk holds a Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies, Studies of Comparative Ideas and Cultures. She works as a trained folklorist at the Institute of Ethnomusicology at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her research on marginalised folklore genres, hybrid forms in border regions and forgotten manuscript songbooks is complemented by research on heritage-making processes. Lately, she has been focusing on the festivalisation of traditional life and the role of experts in it.
Martina Bofulin, PhD, is a permanent research associate at ZRC SAZU and an expert on migration and mobility between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Europe. She has done extensive fieldwork research in China, Serbia, and Slovenia focusing on material and immaterial movements among these locations. She has published extensively on China’s diaspora policies, Chinese migrant transnationalism, and inclusion of Chinese migrants. With regards to walking seminars, she has organized two walking seminars; first on Chinese migrant spaces in Tuscany, and the second on the infrastructure lines in Istria.
Nataša Gregorič Bon is a social anthropologist with a long standing research experience in Albania. She is a Research Fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and an Assistant Professor at the Postgraduate School, ZRC, Ljubljana. She began her research path by delving intoanthropology of place and location, migration and border dynamics. Over the past decadeshe has worked extensively on the anthropology of water and waterways, with a particular focus on rivers and riverine environments. Collaborating with colleagues Urša Kanjir and Liza Stančič, she has developed an intersectional approach, by intertwining big data from remote sensing with thick data of ethnographic research. Nataša has authored numerous journal articles, contributed chapters to various book volumes, and published a monograph. Additionally, she is a co-author of the book volumes "Remitting, Restoring and Building Contemporary Albania" (Palgrave MacMillan/Springer Books, 2021) and "Moving Places" (Berghahn Books, 2016).
Nataša Rogelja Caf completed her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology. Since 2011 she has been working as a research fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her work focuses on mobility studies, new forms of nomadism, women's work migrations, experimental ethnographic methodology, experimental ethnographic writing, and creative non-fiction. Her latest book FootNotes. Ethnographic Essays with Methodological Reflections on Walking and Writing (2023) is coauthored with Špela Ledinek Lozej with whom she has walked and written for more than 25 years. Her publications include several anthropological monographs and articles, ethnographic photo-documentary exhibitions, lectures, children's books, and novels as well as travel reportages for newspapers.
Nick Shepherd is Associate Professor of Archeology and Heritage Studies at Aarhus University and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria. In 2004-2005, he was based at Harvard University as a Mandela Fellow. In 2008, he was a visiting professor at Brown University, and in 2009 at the University of Basel. In 2014-2015, he was based at Colgate University as a distinguished visiting professor. He is co-convenor of the Walking Seminar Project.
Primož Pipan completed his Ph.D in Geography. Since 2011 he has been working as a research fellow at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. His work focuses on heritage, geographical names, natural disasters and public participation. In addition to numerous research papers and chapters in monographic publications on a range of subjects, he has – as a member of the Executive Committee of the Ljubljana Geographical Society for 10 years – organised excursions in Slovenia as well as abroad. Within the research group "Heritage on the margins: new perspectives on heritage and identity within and beyond national", he is involved in the organisation and implementation of walking seminars.
Špela Ledinek Lozej holds a PhD in ethnology and has been working at the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) since 2000. She is dedicated to the study of heritage and heritage processes, architecture, dwelling culture and the Alpine economy. Since 2019, she has led the multidisciplinary research program Heritage on the Margins (see Heriscope) and teaches at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU. Since childhood, walking has been a major part of her life, but for the last quarter of the century, her longer walks tended to include various interlocutors, and more recently also researchers.
Urša Kanjir is a remote sensing specialist with a doctorate in environmental studies. She finds great pleasure in collaborating with experts from various disciplines, with a particular interest in anthropology. Their collaborative efforts aim to explore various perspectives on place/space and phenomena associated with it.
Živa Caf is a second-year Cultural Studies student at the University of Ljubljana. She is an amateur photographer, AV documentary filmmaker, and editor of short films. As a student, she works at the Slovenian Cinematheque and at ZRC SAZU. At ZRC SAZU, she is working on the production of ethnographic films within the project Route Biographies.
