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Kalina Yordanova (Bulgarian: Калина Йорданова) is a Bulgarian psychologist and researcher, born on May 25, 1978 in Lovech, Bulgaria. She has a doctorate degree in psychoanalysis and anthropology from University College London. In 2016 Yordanova joined Médecins Sans Frontières.

Research
Yordanova has done research on the intergenerational transmission of war experiences in Bosnia and Herzegovina. By interdisciplinary welding of psychoanalysis and anthropology, she demonstrates that war experiences are recalled incoherently and are communicated to the next generation in the form of bodily symptoms, jokes and objects. Yordanova argues that in the daily interaction between parents and children, children translate these fragments into a comprehensive version of their parents’ biography by gluing the bits and pieces with their own imagination. She shows that children actively seek to reconstruct their family’s past in order to gain the identity of a descendant of a particular family in a given cultural context. Drawing on the work of British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion and the concept of “postmemory” coined by Marianne Hirsch, Yordanova argues the existence of a group basic assumption called “postness”. She thinks that the war experience of the previous generations becomes the organizing axis of their identity and that of their children. Such an identity is shaped by a melancholic longing for an idealised pre-war past when relationship without violence existed.

Translation work
Yordanova’s interest in the social and political dynamic of the break-up of Yugoslavia resulted in her translation into Bulgarian of the novel Kandže (The Claws) by Serbian novelist Marko Vidojković, which looks into 1996-97 protests in Serbia. Yordanova won Traduki award for translation in 2010.

Bibliography (selected)

 * (2016). Yordanova, K. Troubled Journeys: Some Motivations of Young Muslim Men to Join the Islamic State. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 76 (3): 240-254
 * (2015). Yordanova, K. The Second Generation’s Imagery of the Bosnian War (1992-1995). The Anthropology of East Europe Review, 33 (1): 70-86
 * (2015). Yordanova, K. Images of War: The Place of the War Past of the Parents in the Second Generation’s Identity. Journal of Regional Security, 10 (1): 79-102