Jernej Mlekuž is a researcher whose work moves between ethnology, geography, anthropology, cultural history, migration studies, and material culture studies. He works on migration, everyday life, food and drink, media, memory, and nationalism. He pays particular attention to seemingly ordinary things such as burek, Carniolan sausage, slivovitz, and newspaper paper, through which he examines wider social processes. In his work, these objects are not merely reflections of society, but active shapers of belonging, boundaries, memories, and national self-images. He is happiest, however, where theory does not have the final word: on river rapids.
Jernej Mlekuž researches migration through everyday objects, tastes, smells, media traces, jokes, and material remains. He is interested not only in what these things mean, but also in what they do. He treats burek, Carniolan sausage, slivovitz, newspaper paper, and other small companions of social life as active shapers of the world: they help create belonging, boundaries, memories, national self-images, class differences, and everyday forms of power.
His work draws on material culture studies and brings together migration studies, anthropology, geography, cultural history, and media analysis. He looks for large social stories where they are often least expected: in a bite, a glass, a smell, a newspaper clipping, or a greasy stain.
Alongside his research, he lectures at the ERUDIO Higher Education Centre for Sustainable Tourism, edits the book series Migracije [Migrations], chairs the Institute’s Scientific Council, supervises students, and previously served as editor of the academic journal Dve domovini / Two Homelands.
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2026. Glorified Sausage: Performing the Nation among Slovenian Migrants in Interwar USA. Nationalities Papers: in press.
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2026. Bratstvo in slivovka: C₂H₅OH z zaslugami za narod [Brotherhood and Slivovitz: C₂H₅OH with Services to the Nation]. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC. The book is being translated into Croatian, Serbian, and English.
https://zalozba.zrc-sazu.si/sl/publikacije/bratstvo-in-slivovka
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2023. Slivovitz and Everyday Nationalism: The Analysis of Slovene Newspapers in Interwar Yugoslavia. Nationalities Papers: 1–16. doi:10.1017/nps.2023.20.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/slivovitz-and-everyday-nationalism-the-analysis-of-slovene-newspapers-in-interwar-yugoslavia/4BE15C2A0FD0A785118D0BE13EA2D9D1
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2022. Kalorien und Nationalstolz. Oder wie die Krainer Wurst zur Entstehung der slowenischen Nation beitrug [Calories and National Self-Regard; or, How the Carniolan Sausage Contributed to the Emergence of the Slovenian Nation]. Vienna: LIT Verlag.
https://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/978-3-643-91226-8
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2021. ABCČĆ migracij [The ABCČĆ of Migration]. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC.
https://isim.zrc-sazu.si/sl/publikacije/abccc-migracij#v
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2020. The Renaissance of Sausage: The Role of Kranjska Sausage in the Contemporary Process of Reconstructing the Slovenian Nation. Nations and Nationalism, 26/2: 407–423. doi:10.1111/nana.12572.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/nana.12572
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2020. The Sausage That Awakened a Nation: The Carniolan Sausage in the Slovenian National Imagination, 1849–1918. Rethinking History, 24/3–4: 503–522. doi:10.1080/13642529.2020.1831352.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13642529.2020.1831352?needAccess=true
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2020. Pijača z zaslugami za narod: slivovka in banalni nacionalizem v izbranem časopisju socialistične Jugoslavije [A Drink with Services to the Nation: Slivovitz and Banal Nationalism in Selected Newspapers of Socialist Yugoslavia]. Traditiones, 49/3: 115–134. doi:10.3986/Traditio2020490306.
https://ojs.zrc-sazu.si/traditiones/article/view/9432/8537
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2017. Kranjsko klobasanje: Slovenska zgodovina, kot jo pišejo packe kranjske klobase na časopisnem papirju [Carniolan Sausage Talk: Slovenian History as Written by Stains of Carniolan Sausage on Newspaper Paper]. Ljubljana: Beletrina.
https://beletrina.si/knjiga/kranjsko-klobasanje
MLEKUŽ, Jernej. 2015. Burek: A Culinary Metaphor. Budapest; New York: Central European University Press.
https://www.ceu.edu/article/2015-09-22/burek-culinary-metaphor
- Made in YU: How nonhumans activated Yugoslavia (research project • January 1, 2020 - December 31, 2022)
- Imagined material culture. Reflection on the spread of the nationalism in the company of material culture (July 1, 2011 - December 31, 2015)
- He lectures at the ERUDIO Higher Education Centre for Sustainable Tourism and supervises students.
- Burek: A Culinary Metaphor (CEU Press, 2015) was selected by Gourmand International Best of the Best 1995–2025 as the best book of the thirty-year period in the Food Culture category, Cascais, Portugal (2025).
- Excellent in Science award in the field of national issues, Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), for an article published in Rethinking History.Excellent in Science award in the field of national issues, Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), for an article published in Rethinking History (2021).
- Excellent in Science award in the field of national issues, Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), for an article published in Nations and Nationalism (2020).
- Kranjsko klobasanje was selected at the Gourmand Best in the World competition as the best book in the Culinary History category (2018).
- Murko Recognition for outstanding achievements, Slovene Ethnological Society (2018).
- Burek: A Culinary Metaphor was selected at the Gourmand Best in the World competition as the winning book in the Best Food Writing category (2016).
- Excellent in Science award in the field of cultural studies, Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), for co-authorship of the book Going Places (2015).
- Excellent in Science award for an applied achievement in the field of national issues, Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), for editorship of the journal Dve domovini / Two Homelands (2014).
- Excellent in Science award in the field of national issues, Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS), for an article and a book on burek (2012).
- ZRC SAZU fellowship for promising researchers, three months, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway (2001=.
- He chairs the Institute’s Scientific Council.