Milica Prokic

AREA OF EXPERTISE: Environmental History, Yugoslavia, Island Studies, Carceral Studies

AFFILIATION: One Ocean Hub, University of Strathclyde (UK)

I am an environmental historian with expertise in knowledge exchange and public engagement, and the educational background in Visual Arts.

My knowledge exchange work at the One Ocean Hub focuses on building the ocean-related knowledge sharing platforms and outputs across the university, coastal communities and partners such as UNITAR and the UN Decade for Ocean Science.

My historical research looks at the former Yugoslavia and the Mediterranean, as well as islands and their communities globally. I am particularly interested in the (is)landscapes of political violence, exile and incarceration.

In my public engagement work I have collaborated with various universities and research groups, using visual research and illustration to bring science closer to the wider public.

Impact

Amalgamating a range of approaches- from environmental humanities to history of places, spaces, and bodies; labour history; memory studies; oral history; gender studies; nissology (island studies) and prison studies my research contributes to the wide field of scholarship. My doctoral research has been awarded the Rachel Carson Prize as the first environmental history of Goli Otok (Barren Island): the master political prison and labour camp in the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. Going forward, I hope that my work will continue to enhance the understanding the spatio-corporeal interrelationships of carceral systems and intra-human violence.

My visual research has been used by scientists across disciplines to explain their work and the societal implications of their work to the scientific and wider community alike.  My Quantum Technology and Engineering Labs Public Engagement team won the University of Bristol Engagement Award.

Making waves

I host the One Ocean Hub podcast-covering various interrelationships of the ocean and the humankind – check it out here >>

Recent publications

My most recent book, co-edited with Pavla Šimková, Entire of Itself?:Towards and Environmental history of Islands has recently been published Open Access – read here >>

My most recent publication is: Niner, H. J., Wilson, D., Hoareau, K., Strand, M., Whittingham, J., McGarry, D., Erinosho, B., Ibrahim, S., Tshiningayamwe, S., Febrica, S., Lancaster, A. M. S. N., & Prokic, M. (2024). Reflections on the past, present, and potential futures of knowledge hierarchies in ocean biodiversity governance research (Policy and Practice Reviews). Frontiers in Marine Science, 11 – read here >>

Since I started working with the Hub in May 2023, several of my research outputs were published. Though these outputs pertained to the research that I conducted before taking this post, working with the Hub had shaped some of my writing, and the affiliation with the University of Strathclyde meant that I was able to publish Open Access papers such as this one – read here >>

Artwork: Margherita Brunori / Photo by Dids (Pexels)