Wenner-Gren Hunt Fellow

Robin is an anthropologist of post-socialist Europe. She is interested in questions of rural debt and economic governance: How do rural businessmen make ends meet in times of protracted economic precarity, and how are post-socialist governments contributing to or mitigating the effects of joining the EU for their citizens? Her research endeavors to shed light on the difficulties of maintaining rural livelihoods in the modern economy, focusing on a community of farmers in northwest Croatia to understand broader issues affecting southeastern Europeans today.

In 2021 as a Wenner-Gren Hunt Fellow and academic visitor at Utrecht University, she is working on her manuscript stemming from her long-term doctoral research in Istria, Croatia. Prior to this she was a Political Economy Fellow of the Independent Social Research Foundation at the University of Oxford, and a Post-Doctoral Researcher on the ERC project 'Food Citizens? Collective Food Procurement in European Cities' at Leiden University.

She is particularly concerned with issues of taxation, rural finance, and debt, and also how small businesses cope with the increasing influence of large corporations in their markets. More broadly, areas of interest include financialization in post-socialist agri-food sectors, the role of debt in society, the difference between theory and local practices of Yugoslav self-management, business associations and cooperatives in post-socialism, supermarket politics in Europe, farmer politics, informal relationships in local food systems, the translation of terroir in post-socialist contexts, the politics and economic consequences of alternative food procurement networks, and all things related to wine.

She recently co-produced a journal special issue, Beyond the Social Contract: An Anthropology of Tax, Social Analysis 64(2). There is an emerging network of anthropologists studying taxation’s role in society, from which various project are in development. To this end, Robin manages the site: www.tax-anthro.net where one can find resources, announcements, and researchers.

Robin additionally has a background in both political science and economics, and has worked and researched in Kosovo, the Republic of Moldova, and Bulgaria, but most extensively in Croatia. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford, where she did research for a number of years on the Croatian wine sector.

You can find her website, which is updated with publications, research project updates, and research resources for social scientists interested in Istria and/or Croatia, at: www.robin-anthro.com

• The Anthropology of Tax Network
• Robin's website