Activating Modernism: Community-Led Narratives of Post-War Architecture

January 17, 18.00

How did grassroots movements in Central and Eastern Europe change narratives around socialist modernist architecture after 1989?

Dr. Jovana Janinovic will present how these initiatives negotiated contested legacies and today build legitimacy and express opposition to stagnant ways of remembering, contributing to the bottom-up construction of heritage and transforming these often misunderstood structures into vibrant cultural resources or arenas of political contestation.

How are these movements transforming narratives around social-modern architecture, and what meanings do they bring to contemporary spatial dynamics and urban resilience in a rapidly changing world?

How are grassroots activities such as tourism and activism transforming contemporary engagement with socmodern architecture, facilitating its reinterpretation and integration into evolving urban narratives while influencing its legacy?

Dr. Jovana Janinovic is a cultural heritage researcher with a PhD in architecture from the University of Valladolid and a PhD in history from Pavol Jozef Safarik University in Kosice.
She currently teaches at the University of Montenegro and was previously a visiting researcher at the University of Paris-Est, the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the University of Bielefeld. She leads a number of research projects in the fields of heritage tourism, urban studies and cultural geography, and was one of the organizers of the recent workshop “ACTIVISM! The Political Dimensions of Heritage in the Post-Communist World” at EAHN 2024 in Athens.

The lecture is held in English and translated into Polish.