Lumbardhi 101 is an exploratory seminar that focuses on the Lumbardhi River, a vital yet increasingly overlooked lifeline of Prizren.
Once central to the city’s social, cultural, and ecological fabric, the river teemed with fish, birds, and swimmers, powered the city with electricity, sustained over 40 mills and passed through gardens and streets, being an essential part of urban life and collective memory.
In the later part of the last century, in response to the interventions to its structure, it destroyed the iconic Stone Bridge, and became an outcast, further disconnected from society.
Although celebrated and put back into touch through the city’s festivals and biennial, nowadays it’s a moving repository of toxic waste, as its biodiversityhas declined, its accessibility has diminished, and its role in day-to-day city life has faded.
This seminar seeks to bring attention to Lumbardhi and think of it as a common—not just a resource but a space of memory, connection, and possible ecological regeneration.
Bringing together thinkers and practitioners from fields such as ecology, anthropology, ecolinguistics, architecture, urbanism and arts, it aims to assemble and exchange knowledge, share initial findings of new research, exploring perspectives of water heritage, infrastructure, biology, language, and urban life to spark new ways of thinking about and living with the river.
Through research, dialogue, and shared experiences, it aims to reconnect human and non-human inhabitants to Lumbardhi’s waters and imagine its possible future.
APRIL 11 SCHEDULE
10:15 – Introduction and Opening Remarks by Ares Shporta
10:30 – 11:15 – Ecolinguistic prospects for the Prizren place-world by Stephen Cowley
11:25 – 11:40 – Languaging and the River Initiative – A field report by Fisnik Eger
11:40 – 12:20 – On the Presence of the Lumbardh River in the Life of the City by Nebi Bardhoshi
12:25 – 12:50 – A photographic investigation of Lumbardhi River by Ferdi Limani
14:00 – 14:40 – Prizren Region – A Crossroads of Biodiversity, Culture and Heritage
by Bledar Pulaj
14:50 – 15:20 – Lumbardhi and urban transformation by Artnet Haskuka
15:30 – 16:00 Inside Bekim Fehmiu’s Bistrica by Blerina Kanxha
APRIL 12 SCHEDULE
10:00 – 10:40 – Grafted Lakescapes: Modern Dams on Ageless Rivers by Aslıhan Demirtaş
10:50 – 11:30 – Non-Western Technologies for the Good Life by Ovidiu Tichindeleanu
11:40 – 12:20 – Danube Transformation Agency for Agency by Lena Violetta Leitner
13:30 – 15:30 – Reflection Forum
LECTURERS
STEPHEN COWLEY
Stephen Cowley, Professor Emeritus at the University of Southern Denmark. His career has taken him to Italy, Sweden, the former Yugoslavia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Denmark.
During the memorable years 1982-1984, he taught in Prizren. While he tried to learn Albanian, but failed with the Gheg and Prizren Turkish, he continued this linguistic journey towards uncharted questions. This research led him to rapid and interdisciplinary views of language, to the mind and, of course, to how being fits into life itself.
FISNIK EGER
Fisnik Egër is a Psychology graduate interested in culture and research. As part of the Lumbardhi Foundation, he has worked under Stephen Cowley’s mentorship to explore how language influences our perception and relationship with the river.
NEBI BARDHOSHI
Bardhoshi is senior researcher in socio-cultural anthropology, with specific research interests in legal and political anthropology, the anthropology of nature, and the history of anthropological thought.
Bardhoshi is the author of several books including “The Border Stones: The Kanun, Property, Social Structuring” (2011), “Anthropology of the Kanun” (2015), and “Ethnography in Dictatorship: Knowledge, the State, Our Holocaust” (2018, co-authored). He has also published numerous academic articles and served as editor of various volumes on Albanian society as well as the broader Balkan and Mediterranean region.
FERDI LIMANI
Ferdi began his photography career while working as an assistant for foreign photojournalists. Driven by a deep sense of justice and anger, as a teenager he picked up a camera to document the atrocities committed against his people.
This passion led him to study journalism and work with local and international media. In 2008, after being selected to document Kosovo’s declaration of independence, he left the country, continuing his work as a photojournalist in France and then in Turkey and Syria. After returning to Kosovo, he is focused on creating a substantial photographic archive of a rapidly changing Kosovar and Balkan society.
BLEDAR PULAJ
Bledar Pulaj, born and raised in Prizren, is a biologist, university teaching assistant, and PhD candidate, specialized in plant ecology, plant phylogeny, phytochemistry, ethnobotany and biodiversity conservation.
With over a decade of academic, research, and project experience, he is author and coauthor of numerous scientific publications and contributed to biodiversity and conservation initiatives across Kosovo and the Balkans.
ARTNET HASKUKA
Artnet Haskuka is an architect, urbanist and heritage professional, who is the founding director of STOP Institute. With academic and professional background in Architecture and Urban and Environmental Management, she has extensive experience in place-making, heritage management, disaster risk management and climate change action planning and reconstruction and heritage restoration, working with institutions such as the UN-Habitat, Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport and UNDP, among others.
In the last decade she has acted as member of Council for the Cultural Heritage of the Historical Center of Prizren, and contributed to many local and central bodies related to heritage and sustainable urban development.
BLERINA KANXHA
Blerina Kanxha studied Albanian Language and Literature at the University of Tirana and Semiotics at the University of Bologna. She has worked in the communication field for years, focusing on contemporary art, youth engagement, and exhibition curation in Albania and Kosovo. Now she is engaged as the Communications and Program Associate at Lumbardhi Foundation in Prizren.
ASLIHAN DEMIRTAŞ
Aslıhan Demirtaş is the founder of KHORA Office, an expanded architectural practice focused on research, art, and ecology, originally established in New York and now based in Istanbul.
Parallel to her architectural practice, she often teaches and is currently working on her book Graft to be published by Salt with support from the Graham Foundation.
OVIDIU TICHINDELEANU
Romanian philosopher, translator and culture theorist, writing on critical social theory, the history and philosophy of senses, decolonial thought, alternative epistemologies, artistic practices and cultural history.
Editor of IDEA arts + society and member of the editorial board of L’Internationale Online. Member of the artist-run cooperative The Experimental Research Station for Art and Life. Recent article: “Building an Ecological Art Institution”, with Raluca Voinea, in Art for Radical Ecologies, IRI 2024.
LENA VIOLETTA LEITNER
Lena Violetta Leitner is one of the co-founders of DTAFA.
She completed her studies in Digital Arts at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (AT). Currently, she is an artist in residence at Foundation17 in Pristina (awarded by the Province of Styria), seeking to uncover the stories of the buried rivers of the city.