Tanya Zivkovic

Dr Tanya Zivkovic

Senior Lecturer

School of Society and Culture

College of Education, Behavioural and Social Sciences

My research lies at the nexus of bodies, dying and care, and it is primarily concerned with how intersecting social inequalities contour and constrain lives, bodies and the lifecourse. I have examined these intersections in relation to death, dying, organ donation, and obesity. In this work, I explore how individuals, families and communities navigate precarity and endure profound and devastating loss, while also attending to practices of renewal, human flourishing, and the remaking of life. My research has been supported by the Australian Research Council’s DECRA, Future Fellowship and Linkage grants and an NHMRC Partnership Project. 

Year Citation
2025 Zivkovic, T., Nguyen, N., De Haas, R., & Faulkner, D. (2025). 'Softening hedges' as analytic lens and methodological tool in research on advance care planning with Vietnamese migrants. Qualitative Research, 25(1), 189-206.
DOI Scopus1 WoS1
2025 Zivkovic, T., & Marino, S. (2025). "The clock is ticking": (dis)orientations to ageing and end-of-life care in advanced capitalism and care directives. Journal of Sociology, 61(1), 140-158.
DOI Scopus4 WoS2
2025 Zivkovic, T. (2025). The making of transplant kin. Social Science and Medicine, 380, 118173.
DOI
2024 Maher, J. M., Abbott, D., & Zivkovic, T. (2024). The dynamics of peer-to-peer care: Peers as radical care practitioners. Thesis Eleven, 183(1), 119-129.
DOI
2024 Zivkovic, T. (2024). Under pressure: Care, capacity and organ donation. Thesis Eleven, 183(1), 87-102.
DOI Scopus1 WoS1
2023 Zhang, A., & Zivkovic, T. (2023). Rethinking restriction in residential aged care: Dis/abling movement and relations in the time of COVID-19. Space and Culture, 26(3), 351-364.
DOI
2023 Zivkovic, T. (2023). Race, rhetorical veneers and the virulence of colonial violence during COVID. The Sociological Review, 71(6), 1341-1361.
DOI Scopus1
2022 Zivkovic, T. M. (2022). Unfinished Lives and Multiple Deaths. Body and Society, 28(3), 63-88.
DOI Scopus1
2021 Zivkovic, T. M. (2021). Lifelines and end-of-life decision-making: an anthropological analysis of advance care directives in cross-cultural contexts. Ethnos, 86(4), 1-19.
DOI Scopus8 WoS5
2021 Zivkovic, T. M. (2021). About face: Relationalities of ageing and dying in Chinese migrant families. Social Science & Medicine, 291, 1-8.
DOI Scopus15 WoS14 Europe PMC12
2021 Souza, M., Borgstrom, E., & Zivkovic, T. (2021). Rethinking end of life care: Attending to care, language and emotions. Social Science and Medicine, 291, 1-3.
DOI Scopus2 WoS2 Europe PMC2
2021 Nguyen, N., Zivkovic, T., De Haas, R., & Faulkner, D. (2021). Problematizing "planning ahead": a cross-cultural analysis of Vietnamese health and community workers' perspectives on Advance Care Directives. Qualitative Health Research, 31(12), 2304-2316.
DOI Scopus7 WoS7 Europe PMC4
2021 Zizzo, G., Warin, M., Zivkovic, T., & Maher, J. (2021). Productive exposures: Vulnerability as a parallel practice of care in ethnographic and community spaces.. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 32(2), 150-165.
DOI Scopus2 WoS2
2019 Warin, M. J., Jay, B., & Zivkovic, T. (2019). "Ready-made" assumptions: Situating convenience as care in the Australian obesity debate. Food and Foodways, 27(4), 273-295.
DOI Scopus9 WoS10
2019 Zivkovic, T. M. (2019). Preparing for (life after) death: Advance care directives and cyclic temporalities. Australian Journal of Anthropology, 30(3), 264-276.
DOI Scopus3 WoS3
2018 Zivkovic, T., Warin, M., Moore, V., Ward, P., & Jones, M. (2018). Fat as productive: Enactments of fat in an Australian suburb. Medical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, 37(5), 373-386.
DOI Scopus11 WoS8 Europe PMC4
2018 Zivkovic, T. (2018). Forecasting and foreclosing futures: the temporal dissonance of advance care directives. Social Science and Medicine, 215, 16-22.
DOI Scopus36 WoS32 Europe PMC20
2017 Warin, M. J., Zivkovic, T., Moore, V., & Ward, P. (2017). Moral fiber: Breakfast as a symbol of 'a good start' in an Australian obesity intervention. Medical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness, 36(3), 217-230.
DOI Scopus15 WoS13 Europe PMC5
2016 Gunson, J. S., Warin, M., Zivkovic, T., & Moore, V. (2016). Participant observation in obesity research with children: Striated and smooth spaces. Children's Geographies, 14(1), 20-34.
DOI Scopus11 WoS10
2015 Warin, M., Zivkovic, T., Moore, V., Ward, P. R., & Jones, M. (2015). Short horizons and obesity futures: Disjunctures between public health interventions and everyday temporalities. Social Science & Medicine, 128, 309-315.
DOI Scopus80 WoS68 Europe PMC34
2014 Zivkovic, T. (2014). Consuming the Lama: transformations of Tibetan Buddhist bodies. Body and Society, 20(1), 111-132.
DOI Scopus6 WoS6
2013 Zivkovic, T. (2013). Returning from the dead: Contested continuities in Tibetan Buddhism. Mortality, 18(1), 17-29.
DOI
2013 Zivkovic, T. (2013). Embodying the past: Gelongma Palmo and Tibetan Nyungne rituals. Journal of Ritual Studies, 27(2), 45-63.
2012 Warin, M., Zivkovic, T., Moore, V., & Davies, M. (2012). Mothers as smoking guns: fetal overnutrition and the reproduction of obesity. Feminism & Psychology, 22(3), 360-375.
DOI Scopus102 WoS86
2011 Warin, M., Moore, V., Zivkovic, T., & Davies, M. (2011). Telescoping the origins of obesity to women's bodies: How gender inequalities are being squeezed out of Barker's hypothesis. Annals of Human Biology, 38(4), 453-460.
DOI Scopus59 WoS44 Europe PMC21
2010 Zivkovic, T., Warin, M., Davies, M., & Moore, V. (2010). In the name of the child: the gendered politics of childhood obesity. Journal of Sociology, 46(4 Sp Iss), 375-392.
DOI Scopus60 WoS46
2010 Zivkovic, T. (2010). Tibetan Buddhist embodiment: The religious bodies of a deceased lama. Body and Society, 16(2), 119-142.
DOI Scopus7 WoS4
2010 Zivkovic, T. (2010). The biographical process of a Tibetan lama. Ethnos, 75(2), 171-189.
DOI Scopus7 WoS5

 

Date Project/ No. Investigators Funding Body Amount
2023-2026 Situating care: Addressing obesity in disadvantaged communities Prof Megan Warin; Dr Tanya Zivkovic; Prof JaneMaree Maher; Mrs Danielle Abbott. Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage $408,000
2024-2020 Critical Conversations: An Ethnographic Study of Australian Organ Donation Dr Tanya Zivkovic Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship $821,000
2023-2017 Investigating the Inclusion of Vulnerable Populations in Advance Care Planning: Developing Complex and Sensitive Public Policy Associate Professor Jaklin Eliott, Professor Ian Olver, Professor Gregory Crawford, Dr Teresa Burgess, Associate Professor Terry Dunbar, Associate Professor Bernadette Richards, Dr Tanya Zivkovic, Dr Debbie Faulkner, Ms Michele McKinnon National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Partnership Project  $782,000
2019 Family by Family: Addressing childhood obesity through local understandings and local solutions Professor Megan Warin, Dr Tanya Zivkovic, Professor JaneMaree Maher Channel 7 Children's Research Fund $74,000
2016-2015 Hearing the Voices of the Vulnerable in End-of-Life Care Planning Professor Gregory Crawford, Dr Teresa Burgess, Associate Professor Jaklin Eliott, Associate Professor Bernadette Richards, Dr Tanya Zivkovic, Associate Professor Alwin Chong, Dr Debbie Faulkner Northern Communities Health Foundation $25,000
2018-2015        Last Rights? Supporting End-of-life Care in a Culturally Diverse Society Dr Tanya Zivkovic Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)  $327,612
2014 Barbara Kidman Postdoctoral Fellowship Dr Tanya Zivkovic University of Adelaide $30,000
2012 Tibetanising Bacteriology: The Cultural Transformations of Biomedicine  Dr Tanya Zivkovic Australian Endeavour Postdoctoral Research Award (India) $25,000
2011 In-Between Bodies: The Biographical Process of Tibetanised Lamas Dr Tanya Zivkovic Centro Incontri Umani, Ascona, Switzerland $14,000

 

2025, 2024 Qualitative Research Methods in the Social Sciences

2025, 2024 Sociological Research Project

2019 Honours Coordinator Sociology, Criminology and Gender Studies

Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
2024 Co-Supervisor Dissonant embodiments: understanding the phenomenological, sensory, and temporal dimensions of neurodivergent embodiment and the constraints of normativity. Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Lila Wolff
2022 Principal Supervisor Coming of Age With Three Kidneys: An Ethnographic Exploration of How Young Kidney Transplant Recipients Navigate the Transition to Adulthood and Adult Care Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Caitlin Jane Fox

Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
2021 - 2023 Co-Supervisor Embodied Measuring: Outwitting Type 2 Diabetes in Middle Class Urban India Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Pallavi Laxmikanth
2016 - 2020 Co-Supervisor At Home in a Nursing Home: On Movement and Care Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Dr Angela Rong Yang Zhang
2013 - 2016 Co-Supervisor Navigating “madness” and “fatness”: distorted spatiotemporalities in experiences of antipsychotic-induced weight gain Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Ms Tara Lee Bates
2013 - 2016 Co-Supervisor Assemblages of Care: Why Women with Disordered Eating are Ambivalent to Seek Therapeutic Care Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Connie Marguerite Musolino

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