Asst. Prof. Dr. Boštjan Kravanja

Boštjan Kravanja was born in 1972 in Šempeter pri Gorici. He holds a PhD in ethnology and is currently serves as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. He completed his undergraduate studies in ethnology and cultural anthropology at the Faculty of Arts in 1999. He obtained his Master of Science degree in 2002, and devoted his doctoral studies to the anthropological investigation of the South Asian island of Sri Lanka, where he conducted nine months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2003 and 2006. In 2010, he earned his doctorate with a dissertation on backpacker and traveler tourism in Sri Lanka, analyzed from a postcolonial perspective.

Between 1999 and 2001, he was a junior researcher at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology. In 2001, he was appointed as an assistant, and in 2013, he was promoted to the title of assistant professor.

At the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, he teaches courses in the anthropology of religion, space, tourism, media, psychological anthropology, and the ethnology of Asia.

His research focuses on the political uses of religion and mythology, interactions between groups in multicultural settings, the experiential dimensions of ethnographic fieldwork, diverse uses of heritage, and anthropological perspectives on tourism and other worlds and spaces generated by the contemporary production and consumption of identities. On these topics, he has published numerous scholarly articles, a book on mythological landscapes and sacred sites (2007), and a book on Sri Lankan tourist spaces (2012).

In addition to being a member of two research programs funded by ARIS (Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency) – Slovene Identities in European and Global Context (P6-0187, 2009–2021), and Ethnological Research of Cultural Knowledge, Practices, and Forms of Sociality (P6-0187, 2022–2027) – he has also participated in several major research projects supported by ARIS: the first on identity and heritage representations (SICRIS: J6-6139, 2004–2007); the second on integrative concepts of space and place (J6-0374, 2008–2011); the third on the shaping of national community through feasts (J6-4007, 2011–2014); the fourth on Triglav National Park (J6-4310, 2011–2014); the fifth on the heritage of the First World War (J6-7173, 2016–2018); and the sixth on young entrepreneurs in contemporary Slovenia (J6-1804, 2019–2023).

He has also taken part in several bilateral cooperation projects between Macedonian and Slovenian researchers, including: Traditional Culture of Macedonia and Slovenia (2000–2002), Ethnography of Modernization (2005–2006), and Patterns and Dilemmas of Cultural Identities ‘Between Europe and Asia’ (2010–2011).

Between 2023 and 2025, he served as the Head of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, and since 2025, he has been a member of the Senate of the Faculty of Arts.