Roberta Koleva is a sociocultural anthropologist and PhD researcher in Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University, working at the intersections of post-socialism, political ecology, infrastructures and time. Using ethnographic, archival and visual methods, her work explores how people live with overlapping and constantly fluctuating projects of modernity and its futures and how these layered promises shape everyday life, moral economies, and contested landscapes. Her doctoral project examines contested nuclear revival and future-making in Bulgaria through an ethnography of an unfinished socialist-era nuclear power plant on the Danube and the wider social, ecological, political, and material worlds through which it is repeatedly brought back to life even as it decays. Through this case, she investigates how unrealised infrastructures continue to organise expectations, capital flows, political authority, environmental futures, and everyday practices of waiting, endurance, and improvisation.
Roberta holds an MA in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Central European University, completed with distinction in 2024, and a BA in Anthropology from New Bulgarian University, also completed with distinction in 2022. Her earlier research explored post-socialist transformations, urban space, memory politics, political imaginaries, and alternative infrastructures of care in Bulgaria. Her undergraduate thesis examined parental cooperatives in Sofia as alternative childcare arrangements emerging amid shrinking public provision and neoliberal reforms, tracing how parents collectively improvised new forms of care. Her MA thesis analysed imaginaries of “Europeanness,” “democracy,” and the post-socialist “transition” through the dismantling of Sofia’s Monument to the Soviet Army in 2023. Building on this research, she has contributed to contemporary debates on the relevance of post-socialism as an analytical framework and proposed the concept of “standby transition” to describe emic imaginaries but also elite discourses of being caught in a never-ending transition oriented toward a perpetually deferred horizon of “true Europeanness.”
Alongside her academic work, Roberta has experience in journalism, policy-oriented research, visual anthropology, and public communication. She is currently a Research Officer at the Visual Research Center for Perception & Society, where she co-organises a visual anthropology summer school and a collaborative-methods mentoring programme, and contributes to a research project on changing imaginaries of the Cosmos in Bulgaria. She previously worked as an Analyst in the Sociological and Security Programmes of the Center for the Study of Democracy in Sofia, contributing to projects on energy geopolitics, Russian-linked energy infrastructure, depopulation, civil society, and democratic resilience. She is also involved in curatorial and public-facing anthropological initiatives, including AnthropoLogica, a podcast dedicated to bringing anthropological thinking into wider public conversation in Bulgaria.
Publications in peer-reviewed journals:
• Koleva, R. 2024. ‘The Bulgarian Berlin Wall Is Going Away Step by Step’: ‘Standby Transition’ and the Quest for ‘Europeanness’ and ‘Democracy’ in the Discourses Around the Dismantling of the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia. Anthropology. Journal for Sociocultural Anthropology, 11(2), 47–79. https://anthropology-journal.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sp.-Antro...
• Koleva, R. 2024. Usual and unusual places in the post-socialist city: The case of ‘Tea at the Factory’ in Sofia [Obichaĭni i neobi-Chaĭni mesta v post·sotsialisticheskiya grad: Po primera na ‘Chaĭ vŭv fabrikata’ v Sofiya] – In: Blagoeva, E. (ed.). Anthropological studies, 8. Department of Anthropology. Sofia: New Bulgarian University. 229 – 260. https://publishing-house.nbu.bg/bg/elektronni-izdaniq/periodika/antropol...
• Koleva, R. 2023. Transformations of parenting practices in the metropolis: the parent cooperative as an alternative form of raising children in Sofia [Transformatsii na roditelskite praktiki v golemiya grad. Roditelskiqt kooperativ kato alternativna forma za otglezhdane na detsa v Sofia] - In: Kanev, St. M. Yanislavova, B. Parvanov, N. Ivanova (eds.). Sofia-Skopje: cultural dynamics of urban spaces. Sofia: Erove Publishing House, ISBN 978-619-7736-60-1, 273 - 300.
Co-authored publications in peer-reviewed journals:
• Ivanova, S., Koleva, R. 2024. Between Two Disasters: Doing Fieldwork in Pompeii and Herculaneum Against the Backdrop of a Pandemic [Mezhdu dve bedstviya: teren v Pompeĭ i Kherkulan po vreme na pandemiya] – In: Stoilova, E., Kisikova, M. (eds.). Novi i stari tereni na etnologiyata/antropologiyata: digitalni i pandemichni predizvikatelstva. [New and Old Ethnological/Anthropological Fields: Digital and Pandemic Challenges]. Student Ethnological Meetings – Plovdiv 2022. ‘Paisii Hilendarski’ University Publishing House, 52-74.
• Krasteva-Blagoeva, E., Marinisheva, V., Somleva, Y., Karaivanov, K., Koleva, R., Ivanova, S., Vuchkova, T. 2022. Ancient city ‘alive’: Experiencing and consuming Pompeii and Herculaneum. – In: Anthropology. Journal for Sociocultural Anthropology, 9 (1).
Book Reviews:
• Koleva, R. 2024. Broken Glass, Broken Class: Transformations of Work in Bulgaria. Anthropology Journal for Sociocultural Anthropology, 11 (2), Special Issue: Anthropologies of post-socialism/Post-socialist anthropologies: On the battlefield of narratives and imaginaries, 127–133. https://anthropology-journal.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/sp.-Antro...
Other selected publications:
• Koleva, R. 2026. The future of anthropology, again: two (and a half) debates around the concept of “ culture ”. In the meantime. Available at: https://robertakoleva.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-future-of-anthropology-tw...
• Koleva, R. 2026. Is (Visual) Anthropology Possible? Nuba Images: From Colonial Fantasies to Fascinating Fascism. In the meantime. Available at: https://robertakoleva.blogspot.com/2026/02/is-visual-anthropology-possib...
• Koleva, R. 2026. Beginnings: Cinematography, Anthropology, and Nanook of the North. In the meantime. Available at: https://robertakoleva.blogspot.com/2026/01/beginnings-cinematography-ant...
