Prof. Dr. Maida Kosatica

Maida Kosatica has a background in Sociolinguistics, having completed her PhD at the University of Bern and MA at the University of Zadar. Between 2015–2018 she was a doctoral assistant in Language and Communication at the Department of English in Bern. After parental leave between 2019-2020, Maida joined the Department of Anglophone Studies in April 2021 as a Junior Professor of Urban Semiotics and Semantics. Her research, with a strong interdisciplinary orientation, focuses on different meaning-making systems that interact with the visuals, geographical contexts, environments and human interventions. Her main interest lies in understanding the politics of emotions, violence, social inequalities and sustainability in/of urban spaces.

Current work

Maida’s current work focuses on the role and the representational politics of visual (digital) communication, seeking, ultimately, to understand the potential visual messaging has for turning monitorial citizens into morally engaged “activists”. This research takes as its specific empirical focus mass-mediatized representations of children’s suffering. Maida is concerned with the contemporary visual representations of “distant” children’s bodies stylized for public and digital media consumption, especially in the contexts of Global South poverty and “Flüchtlingskrise”. Along these lines and considering that migration is expected to increase, as climate change exacerbates the deterioration of the living conditions of vulnerable populations (especially across the Middle East and parts of Africa), Maida is investigating environmental inequalities disadvantaged or minority populations and territories suffer from. This project looks at the semiotics of (green) urban spaces which favour the wealthy and well-connected.

Geisteswissenschaften/Anglistik/Amerikanistik

Address
Universitätsstr. 2
45141 Essen
Room
R12 R05 A48

Functions

  • Juniorprofessor/in, Anglistik: Linguistik III

The following publications are listed in the online university bibliography of the University of Duisburg-Essen. Further information may also be found on the person's personal web pages.

    Journal articles

  • Kosatica, Maida
    Semiotic landscape in a green capital
    In: Linguistic Landscape Vol. 10 (2024) Nr. 2, pp. 136 - 165
  • Kosatica, Maida
    Building monuments, unleashing anger : The material disruption of contested memoryscapes
    In: Emotion, Space and Society Vol. 48 (2023) 100963
  • Kosatica, Maida
    102: The semiotics of living memorials
    In: Social Semiotics Vol. 31 (2021) Nr. 5: Discourse and Affect, pp. 738 - 756
  • Bilkic, Maida
    Emplacing hate : Turbulent graffscapes and linguistic violence in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina
    In: Linguistic Landscape Vol. 4 (2018) Nr. 1, pp. 1 - 28
  • Book articles / Proceedings papers

  • Kosatica, Maida
    The walls of peril : Belligerent symbolics of post-war murals in Bosnia-Herzegovina
    In: Space-Time (Dis)continuities in the Linguistic Landscape: Studies in the Symbolic (Re-)appropriation of Public Space / Buchstaller, Isabelle; Fabiszak, Małgorzata; Ross, Melody (Eds.) 2024, pp. 209 - 228
  • Kosatica, Maida
    Sarajevo’s War Childhood Museum : A Social Semiotic Analysis of ‘Combi-Memorials’ as Spatial Texts
    In: Multilingual Memories: Monuments, Museums and the Linguistic Landscape / Blackwood, Robert; Macalister, John (Eds.) 2019, pp. 161 - 184
  • Social Semiotics
  • Linguistic and Semiotic Landscapes
  • Discursive and multimodal approaches to violence, suffering and remembering
  • Historical trauma
  • Environmental discourse and inequalities

Kosatica, M. (in progress). Touring warscapes. In R. Blackwood, S. Tufi & W. Amos (eds.) Handbook of Linguistic Landscapes. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Kosatica, M. (in progress). Destroying monuments, unleashing wrath: The material disruption of contested memoryscapes. [Special issue: Temporal Landscapes], Language in Society.

Kosatica, M. (2020). 102: The semiotics of living memorials. [Special issue: Affect and Discourse], Social Semiotics. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2020.1810557

Kosatica, M. (2019). Sarajevo’s War Childhood Museum: A social semiotic analysis of “combi-memorials” as spatial texts. In R. Blackwood & J. Macalister (eds.) Multilingual Memories: Museums and Monuments in Linguistic Landscapes. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Kosatica, M. (2018). Emplacing hate: Traumatic graffscapes and linguistic violence in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. Linguistic Landscape Journal, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.17011.bil