Personal statement

Milica Prokic is an environmental historian with background in Visual Arts whose work brings together research, knowledge exchange, and public engagement. 

Her knowledge exchange projects cover a broad range of themes including envornmental humanities, ocean sustainabilty, and people's mental and physical health. At her current post at Strathclyde, Milica works with the Scottish Parliament Cross Party Group for Medicinal Cannabis, connecting Humanities research with policy-making  processes.

In terms of research, Milica has focused on histories environments of incarceration, warfare and adversity and the embodied and emotional experiences of humans within them. At the University of Bristol,  she wrote a doctoral thesis titled Goli Otok (Barren Island): A Trans-corporeal History of The Yugoslav Political Prison and Its Inmates from the Cominform Period (1949-1956) to the Present. It told a story of how the treeless, sun-bleached limestone island of Goli otok shaped the bodies of its political prisoners, their mental and physical health, but also the endemically violent, island-specific prison system.  As a fellow at the European University Institute, she studied histories of wounding, recovery, and scarring of the women combatants’ bodies in the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle as well as the processes of memorialising, erasure and iconoclasm.

At the University of Glasgow, she worked on the Inventing Reproductive Rights project, where she focused on reproductive health, motherhood, childbirth and child loss among the Yugoslav partisan women in the World War II.  As a fellow at the European University Institute, she studied histories of wounding, recovery, and scarring of the women combatants’ bodies in the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Struggle as well as the processes of memorialising, erasure and iconoclasm.

At the University of Bristol, her public engagement included a collaboration with the Bristol Drugs Project, where she ran a program of art workshops engaging the Project's clients.

As a researcher and the Knowledge Exchange Associate with the One Ocean Hub she has collaborated with various UN bodies, including the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanic Commission, and the UN Institute for Research and Training (UNITAR), and has  liaised with government departments such as the UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, as well as the South African Department for Environment Forestry and Fisheries, working on the interrelated  issues of ocean health and human wellbeing.

With the One Ocean Hub her knowledge exchange projects include convening  the One Ocean Learn knowledge sharing portal and the Art and the Ocean Stewardship e-course in collaboration with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research.