e-mail: jelena@ief.hr
Jelena Marković is a Research Advisor at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (IEF) and an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb.
She received her PhD in 2010 as part of the postgraduate doctoral programme in Ethnology/Cultural Anthropology, with a dissertation entitled Folkloristic and Cultural-Anthropological Aspects of Narratives about Childhood.
She has collaborated on several scientific research projects: 2003–2004, Ethnological and Folkloristic Materials of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts: Preservation and Critical Publication; 2004–2007, Questions of Oral and Folk Poetics; 2007–2013, The Genealogical Aspects of Oral and Folk Tradition. From 2013 to 2014, she was the project leader of the science popularisation project Oral Tradition and Childhood (Ministry of Science, Education and Sports). She collaborated on two scientific and technological cooperation projects with Slovenia: 2014–2015, Ethnological and Folkloristic Research of Cultural Spaces; 2016–2018, Peter Klepac: A Hero of Two Homelands. From 2017 to 2021, she collaborated on the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) project Narratives of Fear: From Old Records to New Orality. She also participated in the IEF’s core activity programmes From Old Records to New Orality (2017–2023), Cultural Challenges of the “Age of Corona” (2020–2022), and Research into Cultural Responses to Existential Threats (2023). She is currently a collaborator on the following projects: Normality and Unease: Folkloristic and Interdisciplinary Approaches (project leader Renata Jambrešić Kirin; EU: NextGenerationEU); Mapping Genre Practices (project leader Zrinka Božić; University of Zagreb); A Research-Artistic Project on Inclusion, Epistemologies of Resistance, and Justice in the Performing Arts: What Is Going On? (project leader Una Bauer; EU: NextGenerationEU); and A Comparative Analysis of the Mechanisms of Successful Sexual Ageing – A Mixed-Methods Study in Five Countries (project leader Aleksandar Štulhofer; EU: NextGenerationEU).
She contributes to teaching in the graduate programme of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb (FFZG), where she has taught the course Anthropology of Childhood since the 2011/2012 academic year. She has also taught the course Ethnography of Communication at the same Department. She was a lecturer at the Department of Art and Restoration, within the graduate programme in Restoration and Conservation at the University of Dubrovnik (2010–2013), and a visiting lecturer at the University of Ljubljana and the University of Pula.
She undertook research training at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, at the Center for the History of Emotions in Berlin (2018), and at Lund University – Centre for Languages and Literature (2019).
She is a co-initiator and co-organiser of numerous conferences, workshops, and panels. These include: On Narratives and Narration (November 2013); Legend: Folkloristic Aspects and an Interdisciplinary Perspective (November 2014); He Who Laughs Last Has Not Understood the Joke: Humour in Everyday Communication (November 2015); Narrating Fear: Research Insights, Theoretical Problems, and Methodological Challenges (October 2017); Challenges of (Researching) Tradition (December 2019); COVID-19 from a Humanities Perspective: Mutations of Fear and Cultural Change (September 2020); Encountering Emotions in Folk Narrative and Folklife (The International Society for Folk Narrative Research) (September 2021); Banija as Metaphor and Metonymy (October 2022); On Narratives and Narration 2.0: A Scientific Conference Commemorating the Centenary of the Birth of Maja Bošković-Stulli (November 2022); Affective Regimes of Normality and Unease (September 2026), among others.
She has participated in approximately forty international scientific conferences (in Estonia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, France, Austria, Spain, Serbia, Macedonia, Germany, Latvia, and Iceland), as well as numerous conferences in Croatia. She publishes scientific papers in Croatian and international publications. She is the author of two scientific monographs, Narrations about Childhood: The Life of Stories in Everyday Communication (2012) and Silences of Fear (2024). She is the co-editor of seven edited volumes: with Ljiljana Marks, On Stories and Storytelling Today (2015); with Renata Jambrešić Kirin, Ljiljana Marks, and Nataša Polgar, Humour in Everyday Communication (2018); with Natka Badurina and Una Bauer, Narratives of Fear (2019); with Natka Badurina, Una Bauer, and Renata Jambrešić Kirin, Encountering Fear (2020); with Ivana Katarinčić, Ines Prica, and Ana-Marija Vukušić, COVID-19 from a Humanities Perspective (2022); with Renata Jambrešić Kirin and Ines Prica, Shaken: Scientific-Humanistic and Artistic Achievements of the Banija Earthquake (2025); and with Ljiljana Marks and Nataša Polgar, On Stories and Storytelling 2.0 (2025).
From 2015 to 2023, she was co-editor of the journal Narodna umjetnost: Croatian Journal of Ethnology and Folklore Research. Since 2026, she has been co-editor of the journal Et al.: Journal for Performance Theory and Practice. She is a four-time recipient of the annual HED “Milovan Gavazzi” Award, awarded for scientific and teaching work as well as for the popularisation of the discipline.
Her research interests include narrating in everyday life; the politics and ethics of narrative practices; narratives of fear; the communicative function of silence; the relationship between language and pain; the anthropology of childhood; the anthropology of affects and emotions; and the methodology and ethics of ethnological and folkloristic research.
Bibliography: https://www.croris.hr/crosbi/searchByContext/2/17305