Dr. Anna Antonova

Anna S. Antonova joined the Rachel Carson Center as a researcher in residence in 2019 and took up the position of director of environmental humanities development in 2020. From October 2022, she is also co-I and the academic lead for the Bulgarian Black Sea Transition Coastal Laboratory in the three-year Horizon Europe consortium EmpowerUs. She studies social and environmental change in the contemporary European context, particularly in coastal landscapes, and examines the relationship between societal transformations and environmental governance in the EU. Her research is highly interdisciplinary, combining approaches from the environmental humanities, critical policy studies, and political ecology. Anna was previously a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellow as part of the ENHANCE network at the University of Leeds, where she wrote her dissertation on the conflicting narratives about environment and society emerging from the Yorkshire North Sea and Bulgarian Black Sea coastlines. 

Selected Publications:

• "Sustaining transformations: changing marine governance, environmental meaning, and ‘left behind’ Brexit narratives on the Yorkshire East Coast." Maritime Studies 22 (2023): 2.
• "България в ерата на антропоцена? Хуманитарните науки, обществените трансформации и околната среда (Bulgaria in the Anthropocene: Social transformations and the relevance of the environmental humanities)." Seminar_BG 25 (2023).
• "Toxic Flows and Societal Exposures: The Maritime Toxic Timescape, Environmental Degradation, and Social and Political Change on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast from the 1950s Onward." In Toxic Timescapes: Examining Toxicity across Time and Space, edited by S. Müller & M.B.O. Nielsen, 130-152. Ohio University Press, 2023.
• with A. van Dam. “Environment and Integration on the Edge of Europe." Political Geography 93 (2022): 102554.
• with A. Kadfak. “Sustainable Networks: Modes of Governance in the EU’s External Fisheries Policy Relations Under the IUU Regulation in Thailand and the SFPA with Senegal.” Marine Policy 132 (2021): 104656.
• “Debating Landscape Citizenship on the Coast: Conflicting Views from the Bulgarian Black Sea and Yorkshire North Sea shores.” In Landscape Citizenship, edited by T. Waterman, E. Wall, and J. Wolff, 40–56. Routledge, 2021.
• “Blending Environmental Humanities and Policy Studies: A Narrative Analysis Approach to Hybrid Scholarship on the Coast.” In Researching People and the Sea: Methodologies and Traditions, edited by M. Gustavsson, C. White, J. Phillipson, and K. Ounanian, 285-308. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
• with A. Rieser. “Curating Collapse: Performing Maritime Heritage in Iceland’s Museums and Tours.” Maritime Studies 18, no. 1 (2019): 103–114. 
• “Salt Symbiosis on the Black Sea.” 360° video for the ENHANCE closing exhibition Umweltschmerz at the Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany, 17–20 October 2018.
• “The Rhetoric of ‘Responsible Fishing’: Notions of Human Rights and Sustainability in the European Union’s Bilateral Fishing Agreements with Developing States.” Marine Policy 70 (2016): 77–84.