UB Reporter: Balkans’ breakup sparks career path

UB Reporter: Balkans’ breakup sparks career path: "Balkans’ breakup sparks career path

Anthropologist Vasiliki Neofotistos studies ethnic relations between Macedonians, Albanians

By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

Growing up in Greece in the 1980s and '90s, Vasiliki Neofotistos had a front row seat to the breakup of the Balkans following the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
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While working as a doctoral field researcher in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, Neofotistos experienced firsthand the conflict between Macedonians and ethnic Albanians.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

She says the urge to learn more about the political and social upheaval to the north became the first step on a career path in political anthropology.

'I'm interested in questions of power in societies, conflict resolution and policy making,' says Neofotistos, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, College of Arts and Sciences, who joined the UB faculty last fall. 'I've conducted research in the Republic of Macedonia and studied inter-ethnic relations between Macedonians and Albanians living in the country.'

She focuses on the relations between these two ethnic groups because of their political struggles for state power after the collapse of socialism, she says, but notes that Turks, Bosnians, Serbs and Roma are als"