Rreth – Povodom – у погледу – Glede
Charlie Warner Today:
~ Doctoral Researcher (Anthropology & Political Sciences), University of Leuven, Belgium
I am conducting doctoral (PhD) research that includes ethnographic fieldwork with combat veterans in Southeast Europe under the auspices of the Faculty of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Leuven International & European Studies (LINES) at the University of Leuven, Belgium. My anthropological research and fieldwork is supported by a fundamental research grant (#1149421N) from the Research Foundation – Flanders (see below). My research interests include Veterans Studies, Post-Conflict Resolution, Strategic Peacebuilding, Art & Anthropology, Decolonization, and Southeast Europe/Former Yugoslavia.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8407-1505
KU Leuven Who’s Who: https://soc.kuleuven.be/anthropology/staff/00122596/
~ Fundamental Research Fellow, FWO, Belgium
“The Research Foundation – Flanders (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek – FWO) stimulates and financially supports fundamental scientific research, strategic basic research, clinical scientific research, the purchase of large-scale and medium-scale research infrastructure, and the management of large computing capacity in Flanders.” – FWO. PhD research project title: “A Soldier’s Experience for Society’s Peace: Combat Veterans and Post-Conflict Resolution in Southeast Europe”.
~ M.Sc. (Summa Cum Laude) – Social & Cultural Anthropology, University of Leuven, Belgium (2020)
~ B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) – Cultural Anthropology, University of Utah, USA (2012)
Academic Papers & Journal Publications:
– Warner III, C. O. (2022). “'(En)acting our experience: Combat veterans, veteranality, and building resilience to extremism.” Journal of Regional Security, 17(2), 267-292. DOI: 10.5937/jrs17-35682. Find it here (open source).
– Warner III, C. O. (2022). “’We’re Not Invisible…We’re In Second Place.’ Disrupting (Thus Connecting) Transnational Gender Narratives Within Veterans Studies.” Journal of Veterans Studies, 8(1), 74–75. DOI: http://doi.org/10.21061/jvs.v8i1.320. Find it here (open source).
Op-Eds, Explainers, Blogs, and General Articles:
– “Od razminiravanja bombi do dešifriranja života: IED-ovi, društvene znanosti i veterani danas.” by Charles O. Warner III & Zdravko Senčar in Magazin za Vojnu Povijest (national magazine – print only – Croatia 2023).
– “Sudjelovanje zagorskih veterana branitelja u znanstvenom socijalnoantropološkom istraživanju” by Charles O. Warner III & Zdravko Senčar for Glas Zagorja (print only – Croatia 2023)
Online interviews and research discussions:
– “How to define a ‘veteran'” episode, with the 2024 podcast “Scuttlebutt” – in association with the Veterans Breakfast Club, United States
– Research Q&A and Veterans Studies discussion, with the Service-to-Service podcast 2024 – The Kentucky Center of Veterans Studies, University of Kentucky, United States
– Interview & research discussion (YouTube), with the EOD Warrior Foundation’s podcast, “Behind the Warrior” 2023 – Florida, United States
– Interview & research discussion (YouTube), with the NGO “Carpe Diem” – 2021 – Karlovac, Croatia
Academic Conference Presentations:
2024 | “When you can’t (say) ‘compare’: A discussion of ethnographic methodologies tracing veteran transnational relations” for the 6th Veterans in Society Conference organized by the Veterans Studies Association – University of South Carolina, United States
2023 | “The Origin of a Veteran: Combat, commonality and (re)constituting a transnational identity in the Yugoslav space” for the conference “The 1990s: Serbs and Croats in Regional and Global Context” organized by the Archives of Serbs in Croatia, the journal Tragovi, and the Belgrade Institute of Social Sciences – Zagreb, Croatia
2023 | “Forms, Frictions & Fractures of Veteran Solidarity: Ethnographic encounters with(in) contested post-war memoryscapes” at the 7th Czech Association for Social Anthropology Conference – Charles University, Prague, Czechia
2022 | “Tales, Tactics & Tensions of Toxic Veteranality: Identifying divides and structuring discourse when/if combat veterans engage with methodologies of peace” at the 33rd German Peace Psychology Forum – University of Marburg, Germany
2022 | “Veterans in Verse & Volta: Post-war poetry, performance and participant sensation in Former Yugoslavia” at the “Vienna Anthropology Days” – University of Vienna, Austria
2022 | “Necroveteranality: Encountering the veteran netherworld of emblematic ghosts, memory mortuaries and living death” at the conference “Dealing with the Dead” – Manchester Metropolitan University, U.K. (cancelled)
2021 | “(En)Acting Our Experience: Combat veterans, veteranality, and building civil resilience” at the Belgrade Security Forum – Belgrade, Serbia
2021 | “The Krsnik Among Us – Critical fabulation, combat veterans, & (re)imagining Defender narratives in Croatia” at the “Socialism on the Bench 2021” Conference – University of Pula, Croatia
Reviews & Contributions:
– Review for Anthropology Book Forum (2023): “Syncretic Poetry” and Particular Synergies: A review of Safet HadžiMuhamedović’s Waiting for Elijah. Read my review here.
– Review for Anthropology Book Forum (2023): Pinelandia: An Anthropology and Field Poetics of War and Empire. Read my review of Nomi Stone’s monograph here.
– Museum of the Homeland War, Karlovac, Croatia
Presentation: “Croatia: After-Action Review (2021-2022) – Ethnographic Fieldwork with Veterans of the Homeland War”
– Ethnography, Veterans, and Veteranality Research Poster 2021, (on display in) Pakrac, Croatia
Muzej vojne i ratne povijesti / Military and War History Museum
A family of veterans: Charlie Warner (Iraq), father (Vietnam – three tours), mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather (WWI).
Warner in the Past:
U.S. Peace Corps – Kosovo (2014-2016)
Following the completion of a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Utah in 2012, I applied to serve with an American development programme (and a soft-power vector for American influence abroad) known since the days of President John F. Kennedy as Peace Corps. Peace Corps is funded by the U.S. government and relies on unpaid volunteers who commit two years of their life to service in one of several development fields as established by Peace Corps in Washington, DC. For me, after completing a summer of in-country training that included extensive lessons in the Albanian language, I was sent to work as an English language teacher at a high school in Gjakova, Kosovo (where I was interviewed from time-to-time – see screenshot above from KTV). For two years, I lived and worked in Gjakova while also traveling around the country and the region. This period (marked by a Christmas in Sarajevo, hidden beaches in Albania, and trips through Serbia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia) was destined to be but the first of several stays in Southeast Europe.
U.S. Air Force – Explosive Ordnance Disposal (2000-2007)
“Initial Success or Total Failure” – motto, Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD)
When I was 19 years old and almost a year prior to the 9/11 attacks in the U.S., I volunteered to join the U.S. Air Force….and then volunteered again to join EOD, commonly referred to as “Bomb Squad”. (For a quite glorious description of the EOD career field as well as the equipment I used on an almost daily basis, see the website maintained by the U.S. Air Force….just be careful clicking any links that say “apply now”.) Including boot camp in Texas and completion of EOD training with other servicemembers from the Army and Marines at NAVSCOLEOD in Florida, I served for a total of 6.5 years in duty stations, short-term missions, and (combat) deployments around the world (to include Germany, South Korea, Iraq, the South Pacific, and America). Upon completing my enlistment with an Honorable Discharge at the rank of Staff Sergeant (E-5), I returned to the U.S. and entered the University of Utah to begin studies in social anthropology. (Photo credit: U.S Air Force/Samuel King, Jr.)
The Veterans Eclectic 