Alisa Alieva, M.A.

Predoctoral Researcher

Contact

Universität Regensburg
Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies
Landshuter Str. 4
93047 Regensburg
Germany

+49 (0)941 / 943-5360 alisa.alieva(at)geschichte.uni-regensburg.de

Research Project

Russian Gastronomic Venues in Belgrade as Projects of Migrant Emplacement and Actors of Neoliberal Urban Redevelopment

Since 2022, an estimated 200,000 Russians have moved to Serbia, with the majority of them settling in Belgrade. The research project explores how Russian migrants’ emplacement in Belgrade intersects with ongoing urban regeneration, producing new forms of social and spatial inequality. A special focus is placed on the role of the numerous gastronomic venues opened by Russian migrants in the city over the past four years. Combining secondary document analysis, multi-sited ethnography, and in-depth interviews, I analyse how these gastronomic venues function as projects of migrants’ economic, social, and affective emplacement. The project aims to contribute to scholarship on migrants and city-making by demonstrating how migrants’ place-making and broader city transformation processes mutually shape one another. Additionally, it will contribute to migrant foodways research by highlighting the classed dimension of migrant gastronomic nostalgia.

Curriculum Vitae

Alisa Alieva is a social scholar and a pre-doctoral researcher at the Graduate School of East and Southeast European Studies at the University of Regensburg. She holds an MA in Nationalism Studies from the Central European University and a BA in Sociology from the Higher School of Economics. Her current research focuses on transnational authoritarianism and post-2022 Russian migration, with particular attention to affective and spatial processes in the context of displacement.