Miha Kozorog is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology at ZRC SAZU and holds the title of Associate Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. His main areas of research include borders, political ecology, people-wildlife relations, space and place, landscapes, agrarian worlds, economic relations, festivals, and popular music. He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Traditiones. In 2012, the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (ARIS) recognized his work as an outstanding scientific achievement.
After earning degrees in economics (1996), sociology (2002), ethnology and cultural anthropology (2002), and a PhD in ethnology (2008), Miha Kozorog intended to conclude his academic career, but a tedious administrative position prompted him to apply for a postdoctoral project. With a project on the role of festivals in the production of space and places, he returned to research in 2010. This remained eclectic, just as his studies had been. However, in the second decade of the 21st century, this “lack of discipline” was not merely a matter of curiosity but also a reflection of the emerging landscape of academic work (especially for younger scholars) within a neoliberal predicament. He ended up in the academic precariat. Thus, he threw himself into every possible project, tackled topics without rhyme or reason, and became a master at jumping from one new topic to the next. Or to put it another way: he knew how to measure out just the right amount and dig just deep enough to produce the publications expected by project leaders, thereby justifying the few percent of temporary employment. For several years, he was also torn between two institutions, as both offered him this kind of work.
In 2024, he settled academically at ZRC SAZU, where he enjoys researching the relationships between humans and wild animals, as well as the ecologies engendered by borders. In addition to political ecology, he is also interested in political economy.
Kozorog, Miha. 2026. The Positive Face of the Young Entrepreneur: The Hegemonic Process of Social Innovation in Slovenia. Dialectical Anthropology 50 (1): 121–141. DOI: 10.1007/s10624-025-09794-8.
Kozorog, Miha. 2025. Wildlife Fencing as Resistance from Below: A Case from the Slovenian Borderland. In A. Harrisson, M. Eilenberg (eds.), Fences and Biosecurity: The Politics of Governing Unruly Nature. Helsinki University Press. DOI: 10.33134/HUP-30-4.
Kozorog, Miha (& Bartulović, Alenka). 2023. Songs Against Boredom: Youth, Music, and Bosnian Exile. In E. L. Espiritu Gandhi, V. Nguyen (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives, pp. 445–456. Routledge. DOI: 10.4324/9781003131458-46.
Kozorog, Miha. 2019. “They Feed Here and Live There”: Borderwork with Wildlife in Slovenia’s North-East Corner. Traditiones 48 (1): 191–211. DOI: 10.3986/traditio2019480108.
Kozorog, Miha. 2016. Hallucinating the Slovenian Way: The Myth of Salamander Brandy, an Indigenous Slovenian Psychedelic Drug. In R. L. Brulotte, M. A. Di Giovine (eds.), Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage, pp. 125–139. Routledge.
Kozorog, M. 2016. Triggering Movement in Places of Belonging: Jazz Festival Organizers as Locals-Cosmopolitans in a Small Slovenian Town. In N. Gregorič Bon, J. Repič (eds.), Moving Places: Relations, Return, and Belonging (EASA Series 29), pp. 105–125. Berghahn.
Kozorog, Miha. 2012. Dante Alighieri was Here: Place, Identities, Geographies and Histories in a Small Slovenian Town. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 21 (1): 3–21. DOI: 10.3167/ajec.2012.210102.
Kozorog, Miha. 2011. Festival Tourism and Production of Locality in a Small Slovenian Town. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 9 (4): 298–319. DOI: 10.1080/14766825.2011.617453.
- Wildlife in Borderlands (fundamental research project • March 1, 2026 - February 28, 2029)
- TiCToC: Times in Crisis, Times of Crisis: The Temporalities of Europe in Polycrisis (March 1, 2025 - February 29, 2028)
- Young entrepreneurs in times of uncertainty and accelerated optimism: an ethnological study of entrepreneurship and ethics of young people in modern-day Slovenia (fundamental research project • July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2022)
- Protected Areas along the Slovenian-Hungarian border (bilateral project • June 1, 2017 - December 31, 2020)
- editor-in-Chief of the journal Traditiones (2023–)
- member of the editorial board of the journal Studia Ethnologica Croatica (2023–)
- member of the editorial board of the journal Lidé města (2021–)
- editor-in-Chief of the journal Glasnik Slovenskega etnološkega društva (2015–2016)
- editor of the book series Zupanič’s Library (2006–2008)