One of first NEWFELPRO’s researchers in the incoming scheme, Andrew Hodges, is currently in the second year of his project titled Producing and contesting the national order of things: tracing how language standardisation processes and state effects configure (non)users near the Serbian/Croatian border (BORDERANTHROLLING). Andrew, who has a PhD in anthropology, is conducting a research on lived experiences and attitudes towards linguistic standards of two speech communities in Serbia near the Croatian-Serbian border. In both speech communities there will be a minority who define themselves as Croatian language users. The goal of his research is to understand better the social, political and linguistic impact of importing the state education language technologies and their influence on how particular inclusions and exclusions are drawn.
Andrew actively works on popularisation of his project in other European countries. Upon finishing his field work, he gave an interview to newspapers Croatian Word. You can find the whole interview here. In February this year, Dr. Hodges presented his project and results to Norvegian colleagues, experts in linguistic studies, at the University of Oslo. He also had a lecture at a conference organized by the University of Regensburg.
In his free time, Dr. Hodges is active in working with asylum seekers in Zagreb through a football club Zagreb 041.
You can read more of Andrew's work at the following link.