CFD Team Spotlight: Marina Lazetic, Director of Programs
The Newsletter Team set with our Director of Programs, Marina Lazetic for an interview about her research, passions, hobbies, and special CFD projects. The transcript of our interview is below.
NEWSLETTER TEAM: Where are you from?
I am from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was born in this beautiful city, but my family, like many others, was displaced and moved several times since as a result of the Bosnian War in the 1990s. I spent the early years of my life in a beautiful village of Podvitez, nearby Sarajevo and it is one of my favorite places in the world. Mountains, and pine forests are always home for me.
NEWSLETTER TEAM: What is your research focus?
My primary research focus is forced displacement and its impact on the displaced and their hosts. For many years I have been researching anti-immigrant movements in the Western Balkans and the EU, and most recently in the USA as well.
Another big research area for me is displacement in the context of environmental disasters and climate change. At the moment I am writing my dissertation on “immobility” in the United States and trying to understand why people live and stay in disaster prone areas and how they organize to help and advocate for their communities.
NEWSLETTER TEAM: What is your role within the Center?
I am the Director of Programs at CFD, working primarily on leading our research work and student programs. It is an incredibly rewarding position as I get to work with our students, affiliate faculty and the board, as well as with our colleagues across the globe. I lead research and writing on several of our current projects, coordinate organization of many CFD events and seminars, and together with our Directors and many colleagues from BU and partner universities, design and lead student engagement programs.
NEWSLETTER TEAM: What experiences most directly lead you to your role with the Center?
When I think about it, I could argue that all my experiences merged perfectly to lead me to this role. There is, however, one specific experience that led me directly to CFD. As a young activist in Bosnia and Herzegovina, I used theater to advocate for education reform and Roma housing rights. After my move to the US, I studied theater and human rights after which forced displacement issues slowly crystallized as my main interest area. In the summer of 2019, I attended The Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research where Carrie Preston was the teacher assigned to my group. The topic of that year’s summer school was theater and migration and I was lucky enough to meet many interesting people and to talk to Carrie about our work and research interests. We shared the passion for forced displacement work and bringing different disciplines, especially humanities and social sciences, together to engage with these complex issues. After the summer school, she invited me to join her and Muhammad in leading the Initiative on Forced Displacement which, three years later, became the Center on Forced Displacement.
NEWSLETTER TEAM: What inspires you about this work?
What inspires me the most is the desire to contribute to the solution of some of the most acute challenges of forced displacement, especially as my family and many people I know have been impacted by it. I am also incredibly inspired by the people I get to work with. Whether it be our amazing CFD team, the people I meet through research, or many colleagues we work with across BU and the world – these people bring me hope and inspiration that we can imagine and create a much better world for all.
NEWSLETTER TEAM: Tell us about some of your passions and hobbies outside of academia. What makes you, you?
If I am not thinking or writing about forced displacement, I am most likely painting or working on a new theater project. Art has always been a huge part of my life. I use painting and drawing to relax and re-center. I also continue to do theater, although in a different form. Turns out that my husband who is a professional classical musician also has a great talent for acting, so we create two person shows for the Balkan diaspora in the US and Canada. We put on a show and toured in 2020 and we are currently working on a new one – “Two” by Jim Cartwright – but in Serbian! :)
NEWSLETTER TEAM: What is your current passion project with the Center you would like to highlight? Why does this project resonate with you?
Besides my current research on immobility and displacement in the context of environmental disasters and climate change, I am incredibly excited about our Interdisciplinary Summer School on Forced Displacement. Our very first session is this summer, July 17-29 in Belgrade, Serbia. Colleagues from Boston, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and London have all been working together to set up this school and we are delighted to be able to bring all our students together in Belgrade. The project involves professors and researchers from five universities, seven NGOs (and counting!), and many artists, activists, policymakers, and independent journalists. We are planning many workshops and meetings for students as well as for the researchers and practitioners, many of whom will also contribute to our forthcoming book on the EU and the US border regimes and their impact. This is one of many dreams come true for me as I always look for meaningful ways to stay connected to and engaged in the Balkans.