Zorana Đorđević is an interdisciplinary researcher specializing in archaeoacoustics, medieval sacred architecture, and historical soundscapes. She holds a Master of Architecture and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Natural Sciences and Technology, both from the University of Belgrade. She was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Barcelona (2023-2025), where she led the project CULT-AURAL, Aural Culture: Decoding the Sacred Soundscapes of Medieval Europe. Within this project, she conducted fieldwork campaigns across Serbia, Catalonia, and Norway, and completed a secondment at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo.
She has been invited to contribute to international events in archaeology, musicology, and heritage studies, including the University of Pennsylvania, the Jagiellonian University, and the International Musicological Society. She has also organised international conferences and sessions at the European Association of Archaeologists. Her editorial work includes co-editing Ressonàncies del Passat: La Recerca Arqueomusicològica a Catalunya, a peer-reviewed volume in press with Tirant lo Blanch, and the special issue Medieval Sensorium: Exploring the Archaeology of the Senses of the journal Studia Universitatis Hereditati.
Her most significant contributions to the study of sound of medieval bells, matraques, and other large percussion instruments and its presence across sacred landscapes include the peer-reviewed articles “Sonic Heritage of Medieval Bells from the Valdres Region of Norway” in Heritage 8/9 (2025) and “Unveiling the Historical Significance of Santa Maria d’Àneu: Can Soundscape Studies Illuminate Its Role within the Medieval Ecclesiastical Structure?” in Studia Universitatis Hereditati 12/2 (2024), as well as the chapters “Sacred Soundscapes of the Medieval World: The Role of Percussion Instruments in Landscape Sacralisation” in Medieval and Early Modern Soundscapes, edited by Ascensión Mazuela Anguita (Boydell & Brewer, in press), and “Sound of Wood: Acoustic Analysis of Two Catalan Matraques from Ripoll and Cervera” in Ressonàncies del Passat: La Recerca Arqueomusicològica a Catalunya, edited by Margarita Díaz-Andreu, Miquel López García, and Zorana Đorđević (Tirant lo Blanch, in press).
Her indoor archaeoacoustic research includes “The Ceramic Vessels of Trg: Acoustic Wall Construction in a Medieval Serbian Church” in Change over Time 9/2 (2021), “Archaeoacoustic Examination of Lazarica Church” in Acoustics 1/2 (2019), and “Archaeoacoustic Research of Ljubostinja and Naupara Medieval Monastic Churches” in Open Archaeology 5/1 (2019). Additionally, exploring the visual and material dimensions of sound, she published “Sound Imagery in Medieval Serbian Frescoes” in Exploring Ancient Sounds and Places: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Archaeoacoustics (Oxbow Books, 2024).
Alongside her academic research, she has developed public-facing work on acoustic heritage. She curated the exhibition Archaeoacoustics: Sacred Architecture of Medieval Serbia, originally presented at the Museum of Science and Technology in Belgrade and later toured across the country. She has also reflected on exhibition-making as a method for communicating acoustic heritage in “Resonance and Silence: Displaying Acoustic Heritage,” published in Metode vol. 4, Exhibition as Method (2026).
