It’s important to be persistent, focused, and dedicated to one’s work, without forgetting that it is work. Academic research can often become a totalising endeavour, where one loses the sense of work-life balance. Work is what you do, not who you are.

 

Meet our historian Anna Calori, the second REWIRE fellow alongside Rosie Johnston, working in the RECET Network at the University of Vienna. Anna’s passion for history, she says, already started in her early years when she read Renata Viganò’s “Agnese Goes to Die”. Today Anna studies – broadly speaking- the history of socialist Yugoslavia and alternative forms of globalisation which, amongst many other things, has led to her conducting an oral history interview in a bar full of dead and stuffed animals.

 

Describe your research in one sentence.


Anna: I look at the history of socialist Yugoslavia and its cooperation with the developing world to see the ramifications and impact of a model of workplace democracy and non-aligned development.

Tell us about a normal day in the life of a postdoc.

Anna: Politics and current affairs are an important part of my life, so I start the day listening to news on the radio. After an undisclosed amount of coffee, I start writing and try to do most of the thinking-related part of my work in the morning. Pomodoro technique and music help me stay focused. Afternoons are a bit more difficult concentration-wise, so I pack reading, marking, emailing, swimming when I can into the latter part of the day. Podcasts and cooking are a great way to unwind after this.

How will society benefit from your research?

Anna: We think of globalisation as a pervasive and inevitable process. It is a phenomenon that permeates our lives, and that has taken a particular shape since the 1970s: a capitalist, Western-led circulation of goods and ideas that creates dependencies and inequalities. With my project, I try to trace the history of different, alternative forms of globalisation through the networks developed within the Non-Aligned Movement (the group of countries that, during the Cold War, were neither in the Atlantic nor in the Soviet Bloc). These countries were actively engaged in thinking about, and experimenting with, different ideas of economic cooperation that would create less exploitative and more equitable paths to economic development. By recovering the histories of these exchanges, we can rebalance our view of the current form of globalisation as being the only game in town, and start thinking of viable alternatives.


#researchgonewrong: Share a funny/surprising or unexpected anecdote with us from your academic career so far:

Anna: I recently did an oral history interview in a bar full of stuffed animals (jaguars, gazelles, buffalos). They were very distracting, although our informant (a very alive human being) didn’t seem to mind.


What does REWIRE mean to you?

Anna: Let’s start from the basics: it is a great programme that provides myself, and 15 other excellent fellows, with the possibility of conducting research for three years at one of the best universities in Europe, with a competitive research budget. This might seem obvious and self-explanatory to anyone looking at REWIRE’s website, but it is so important to stand back and think how rare this opportunity is – especially for junior female academics. Personally, this is an excellent way for me to work in a dynamic and varied research cluster, with the freedom of conducting my own research project amongst excellent scholars and colleagues. It’s a great training programme as well, and it has allowed me to rely on an amazing network of fellows and mentors who have guided me not only in my research, but in my career path as well. At the same time, it has shown me that innovative programmes such as this one have inevitable limitations in the face of structural issues women face in academia.


Who is your personal heroine?


Anna: Renata Viganò. She was a partisan woman from my hometown, Bologna, who joined and organised antifascist resistance in our region. She also wrote one of the first books about women in the Italian resistance, “Agnese goes to die”, a small gem of unassuming realism about women and civic duty under dictatorships. I read this book at the end of my primary school years and I was so struck by the tenacity of this very normal woman. It also ignited my passion for history: I am who I am, where I am, thanks to people like her and history they made.


The most important lesson learned so far that you want to share with other future (female) early post docs:

Anna: It’s important to be persistent, focused, and dedicated to one’s work, without forgetting that it is work. Academic research can often become a totalising endeavour, where one loses the sense of work-life balance. Work is what you do, not who you are.

 

Quickfire Questions


Keyboard or Pen?

Pen then keyboard.

Vanilla or chocolate ice cream?

Pistachio!

Early bird or night owl?

Early bird.

 

Find more information on Anna's research here.