Ana Đorđević (1991) is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. She obtained her BA, MA, and PhD in psychology at the University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy. Her research interests are positioned in sociocultural and critical psychology, qualitative methodologies, and engagement studies, with a special focus on identity and subjectivity issues. She published several empirical and theoretical articles in national and international journals, as well as the monograph The Scent of Ajvar and the Scent of Lavender. Limitations and the Freedom of/from Ethnic Identification for Serbia’s Youth. She is an assistant editor of Critique: The Journal for Philosophy and the Theory of Society.
In contrast to political apathy and abstinence among the youth in the region, this research tends to provide fresh theoretical and empirical insights into young people’s political affect and political engagement. To do this, it will provide a summary of the study on youth political participation and a review of the literature on the connection between politics and emotions. Subsequently, the gap in knowledge on the various forms and platforms of youth political participation and engagement in the Western Balkans will be highlighted. Then, questions will be asked about the meanings, emotions, and future-oriented goals that young people aspire to attain in their sociopolitical environment, based on the alternative epistemological perspective in psychology known as the transformative activist stance (Anna Stetsenko). The research will include a qualitative empirical study on this topic among youth (18–30 years old) from Montenegro, Croatia, and Serbia to supplement the results of the predominately quantitative research.
PROJECT TITLE: “Remembering Wounded Landscapes: Environments as Shared Memory Sites Commemorating War Destruction in the Former Yugoslavia (REMINDED)”
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Josef Djordjevski is a postdoctoral fellow with the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (NCEEER) in Washington D.C., where he is working on an environmental history of the Yugoslav Wars titled “Landscapes of Transition and Conflict” (LATRACON). Primarily an environmental historian, he received his PhD at the University of California – San Diego in 2022, where he defended his dissertation “A Seaside for the Future: Yugoslav Socialism, Tourism, Environmental Protection, and the Eastern Adriatic Coastline, 1945-2000s,” which was a history of the transformation of the Adriatic seaside during the Cold War. His latest publication is a contribution titled “Sailing Through Heritage: Nautical Tourism, Environmental Protection, Conflict, and the Making of the Kornati National Park in Socialist Yugoslavia,” in the edited volume Entire of Itself?: Towards and Environmental History of Islands, to be published with The White Horse Press in 2024.
REMINDED seeks to explore novel ways in which a culture of shared future can be established by collaborative and alternative commemoration practices around specific environments and landscapes. While the Wars of Yugoslav Succession (1991-1999) left a legacy of environmental destruction, environmental impacts from the wars have received little attention by scholars and local communities. This project therefore seeks to demonstrate the importance of commemorating environmental effects of armed conflict in the region by bridging scholars, students, and the public. The project will utilize novel methods to uncover ways that landscapes themselves can serve as monuments, and how collaboration in their commemoration can lead to a shared future.
The project will use novel methods, especially digital and virtual approaches, to ensure that the project’s goals are long-term, open to wider audiences, and sustainable. These will include blogs, social media posts, YouTube videos, and ultimately a website, where scholars, students, and the public throughout the region and beyond will be able to contribute towards the commemoration of specific sites. Specific sites will be selected from across the region, including at least one site from each country that has directly experienced environmental legacies of armed combat, leading to sustained collaboration and shared expressions.
Kriton Kuci has completed his PhD studies in Balkan Studies at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, School of Economic and Regional Studies, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece. His PhD dissertation is entitled “Flagging Albanianism. Banal nationalism in news on line portals in Albania”. He is a MA graduate of International and European Studies at the School of Economics, Business and International Studies, University of Piraeus, Greece. He has a BA Degree in Political Science and Public Administration from the School of Law, Economics and Political Science of the University of Athens, Greece.
He is Lecturer of Political Science at the Mediterranean University of Albania. He has participated in various scientific conferences in Greece, Albania, Serbia, Italy, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc., and has published several scientific articles in international scientific journals. His research interests include nationalism studies, discourse analysis, political systems, political theory, international relations theories, etc. He is fluent in Albanian, Greek, Italian and English.
This research aims to investigate the intricate relationship between banal nationalism, tourism (focusing on the phenomenon of the so called “patriotic tourism”, a term so used and liked in Albania where is common sense to name “our” nationalism as “patriotism”), and their impact on national identities, stereotypes, and societal relations in Southeast Europe. This study aims to delve into the ways in which banal nationalism manifests in the tourism industry, drawing attention to the symbolic representations, narratives, and practices that perpetuate nationalistic sentiments. It will examine how patriotic tourism, often fueled by political agendas and historical narratives, reinforces existing national identities and deepens societal divisions. In the case of Southeast Europe, a region historically marked by ethnic and political tensions, this study will analyze the implications of these dynamics on inter-societal relations. Moreover, the study advocates for alternative models of tourism that promote a culture of shared futures over nationalist divisions. It explores innovative approaches that prioritize cross-cultural understanding, dialogue, and collaboration. Drawing inspiration from emerging trends in responsible tourism, cultural exchange programs, and community-based tourism, the study proposes actionable strategies for fostering a more inclusive and interconnected future.
Valentina Otmačić is a researcher and practitioner in the fields of peace, conflict transformation and human rights.
She received her PhD in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford (UK), with a thesis titled “Resisting division along ethnic lines: a case study of two communities who challenged discourses of war during the Yugoslav conflict 1991-1995”. Her main research interests are in the areas of resistance to violence and constructive conflict transformation. She has published several book chapters and articles on these topics. She is currently undertaking research on resistance to identity-based violence and segregation in Northern Ireland.
As a practitioner, she worked with several UN Agencies and international NGOs supporting war-affected civilians in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Tanzania, Burundi, DR Congo, Lebanon and Colombia. She is also an expert in strategic advocacy and a trainer in conflict transformation. Her resource book “Conflict as a challenge: enhancing children’s capacities of constructive conflict transformation” was published in Lebanon by Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts.
The official narratives of the past in the countries ensuing from former Yugoslavia are almost exclusively focusing on violence. Providing simplified accounts of “our heroes/victims” and “their villains”, these narratives strongly contribute to the persistence of ethnonationalist agendas and deepening of inter-ethnic cleavages in the region. At the same time, lived experiences of collaboration, friendship and joint achievements of members of different ethnic groups from former Yugoslavia, although plentiful, seem to be ignored and exposed to “deliberate forgetting”.
Both negative and positive memories can be activated to promote specific political and social agendas. However, while mechanisms for deploying negative memories of inter-group hostilities to mobilize people for (more) violence have been studied extensively, there is a gap in the knowledge on the activation of positive collective memories to support nonviolent political agendas.
The main aim of the study Memory of Good Things is to explore in what ways can positive inter-ethnic experiences and related good memories of joint past be strategically mobilized to support a culture of shared future. To address this research question, I will firstly facilitate learning about the strategic use of positive past in the practices of three ethnically diverse communities in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina which resisted ethnic segregation and violence during 1991-1995 wars. Secondly, I will examine the current state of the integration of such positive narratives in the public memory at local and national level. Finally, I aim to identify and outline the opportunities for strategic deployment of positive inter-ethnic past to build a shared future in Southeastern Europe envisioned as a region where, as expressed by the wartime mayor of the city of Tuzla Selim Bešlagić, “national, political and religious differences among citizens are not considered a curse, but a source of beauty and wealth”.
Karlo Kralj is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb. Karlo holds a PhD in political science and sociology from Scuola Normale Superiore, where he also worked as a postdoctoral fellow. His main research interests relate to social movement strategies and tactics, interactions between social movements and political parties, and political organizing. Primary regional focus of his research is on Southeastern Europe.
Over the past decade, we can observe a re-emergence of new left electoral actors in post-Yugoslav space. These actors present themselves as ‘movement parties’, a hybrid organisational form that tries to innovate party-political organising and challenge the previously existing centre and centre-left parties. While The Left (Slovenia), We Can (Croatia), and Green-Left Front (Serbia) have by now achieved significant success in their electoral engagement, this project looks more closely at their current strategic predicaments. On the one hand, it aims to offer an analytical overview of the strategic framing through which they position themselves within the broader political conflict. On the other hand, it aims to map key organizational predicaments that these actors will confront in the near future. Empirically, the project will be based on framing analysis of movement parties’ leaders’ statements, including extensive desk research and literature review.
Ivana is a recent doctoral graduate from Meiji University in Tokyo where she is currently affiliated as a Research Assistant. Her academic and professional journey has been centered at the intersection of applied urban research and architecture. She has international practical experiences at Kengo Kuma and Nikken Sekkei Architects in Japan, Al Borde Arquitectos in Ecuador and at a university in Germany. Moreover, Ivana has been a senior associate in the Urban Planning Department at two municipalities and has been a faculty instructor in her hometown, Skopje.
This research project focuses on the evolution and impact of public spaces along two vital watercourses, the Vardar River and its tributaries in Skopje and the Ljubljanica River and its tributaries in Ljubljana. The study aims to conduct a comparative analysis of linear blue and green public spaces in the Balkans, assessing cases with varying levels of success. Ljubljana serves as an exemplar of sustainable urban
solutions, while Skopje grapples with urban challenges amid untapped potential. The research seeks to contribute insights into post-socialist urban development, patterns of corridor usage, issues of inequality and social justice, and potential strategies for fostering a shared urban future. The proposed methodology, including the Good Public Space Index and the researcher’s Multi-Scale Framework, will be applied to assess the effectiveness and “lived” quality of public spaces in the selected cases. The findings aim to enhance understanding of urban livelihood and solidarity, fostering discussions on equitable urban development in the Balkan region.
Born in Sarajevo in 1981. He has a diploma in psychology and a master diploma in social sciences from Sarajevo and Bologna Universities. He has more than 15 years of experience in primary and applied research in social sciences and has done work and published papers and articles exploring a range of topics including political institutions, migration, urban sociology, political economy and contemporary history. For the past decade he worked closely with the Association for Culture and Art Crvena from Sarajevo. His current research focuses on questions in political economy, history of economic theory and practice, and on the theory of social forms.
Present research will explore a very particular institution for development and investment financing that was part of the institutional set-up of socialist Yugoslavia during its entire and rather short life. The institution was officially called “self-contributions” and consisted of regular monthly payments levied over personal income for all employed inhabitants of a city or a certain municipality during the previously agreed period of time (from 6 months to 5 years). What is remarkable is that decisions to adopt such measures were decided at general referendum procedures. By careful analysis of this institution, its history and the related political practice, the research seeks to contribute to two goals. First, it seeks to expand our knowledge on the history of socialist Yugoslavia by providing a detailed study of self-contributions as a unique democratic source of investment funds for crucial development project and improvements in social and material infrastructure. Second, it looks at how insights into the way they functioned, the role they played in the more general systems of social planning, and financing as well as democratic processes they depended on, can be used as inspiration for policies aiming at deepening democratic rule and at giving more agency to citizens in planning, financing and implementation of development programs and projects.
Danijel Matijević earned a PhD in history and Jewish Studies in 2023 at the University of Toronto, where he researched the global history of genocide and mass violence in the 19th and 20th centuries with a focus on Southeast Europe. His dissertation dissects Ustašism, the ideology of the Ustaša movement, and local dynamics of ideological diffusion and intergroup relations in the context of mass violence and genocide. Among a series of research grants and fellowships, Matijević was the recipient of Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, the most prestigious doctoral-level academic award in Canada. His research received further support from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, the Holocaust Educational Foundation at Northwestern University, and Fondation de recherche du Québec – Société et Culture. Matijevic presented his work at a number of academic conferences, including Lessons and Legacies and the International Association of Genocide Studies. He has extensive teaching experience in modern history and history of the Holocaust, most notably at McGill University.
I want to propose a research project that revolves around the history of Kampor concentration camp on the island of Rab. During its existence in 1942-1943, Kampor held more than 15,000 prisoners whom Fascist Italian authorities considered “undesirable” in political, ideological, racial, or ethnonational terms. I intend to write an English-language academic article on the massive rescue operation of some 2,500 of the camp’s Jewish prisoners, which the Yugoslav communist resistance movement put into motion after Fascist Italy’s capitulation in fall 1943, anticipating the German conquest of their former ally’s holdings in East Adriatic. Beside the rescue operation itself, which had been organized by Partisan leadership, the housing of the Jews of Kampor was a complex operation in itself, dependent on intergroup cooperation and a focus on coexistence, involving the efforts of ordinary people from the entire spectrum of Croatia’s and the wider region’s diverse ethno-confessional groups. This is the aspect of the story of the rescue of Jews of Kampor that I aim to explore in greater detail, situating the event into the broader European context of rescue operations during the Holocaust.
Elona Gjata is a linguist with a Doctor of Sciences in Linguistics from the University of Tirana. Her research combines linguistics 0and cultural anthropology, focusing on society and its problems in different regions.
Dr. Gjata worked as a project coordinator in Berlin at the OASA organization from 2021 to 2022. The project was called “We Remember! The Third Generation Tells” and focused on the rescue of Jews from Albanian families during the Holocaust. In 2023, she coordinated the “Kosovo in 100 Photos” project and authored a book with the same title.
In 2019, Dr. Gjata was the recipient of an Erasmus scholarship student and PhD researcher at Humboldt University in Berlin. During her doctoral studies, she was a lecturer in the Albanian Language Department at the University of Elbasan and Tirana.
In 2021, she studied the Goran community in Albania and Kosovo, published in Innovative Paths of Albanology, Peter Lang, Berlin 2023. She is now preparing for postdoctoral studies in Germany.
She is currently interested in researching the Croatian community in the village of Janjevo, Kosovo.
Elona Gjata heads the NGO “Albanian Institute of Cultural Studies” in Pristina. Through her projects, she aims to bring a unique perspective to the cultural diversity of various communities in Kosovo.
This study will examine the role of bilingualism in multicultural societies and its impact on forming ethnic and regional identities. Referring to the analysis of the use of bilingualism in the Albanian community in North Macedonia, we will reflect a clear picture of how this linguistic phenomenon can be used as an instrument for improving identity and how it has influenced the breaking of the line of nationalism in relationships with other social factors. Also, during the study, we will discover the influence of bilingualism in the transformation of the traditional concept of nationalism or the cases where bilingualism is used as a tool for adaptation and affirmation of the identity of the Albanian community, with a particular emphasis on the young generation. In order to give a more explicit result on the role of bilingualism in this environment, this study will refer at the same time to various historical and social developments—moreover, language policies related to the Albanian community in North Macedonia.
Keywords: bilingualism, nationalism, community, ethnic and regional identity, multicultural environment, language policies etc.
Milica Božić Marojević (1980) was born in Belgrade. She completed her bachelor, master and PhD studies in Art History at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, where at present she teaches as Associate Professor. She has also been teaching at the Faculty of Applied Arts and Faculty of Education in Belgrade, as well as at the Faculty of Philosophy in Kosovska Mitrovica. Since 2017, Milica Božić Marojević has been actively participating in the organization and implementation of the continuous learning program at the Center for Teacher Education of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. In 2019, she was elected as director of the Centre for Museology and Heritology. Before that, Milica Božić Marojević was a journalist at Danas Daily, Researcher at Humanitarian Law Center and an International Memorialization Specialist for UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina.
For more than 20 years, she has been interested in the problems of heritage dissonance and reconciliation through art, culture and heritage memorialization. As a regional and international consultant for the management of unwanted heritage, she had organized and participated in various researches and trainings; programmes of permanent education and specialization; curated several exhibitions and wrote more than 30 scientific papers with the focus on the social, cultural and political implications of forgetting events from the past.
In addition to the social role of heritage, its policies, governance, presentation and interpretation, her areas of expertise are also promotion of activism and civic education. Her Ph.D. thesis “Sites of Conscience as Guardians of the Collective Memory” was the first study in the field of heritage dissonance and its role in post war reconciliation processes conducted in the region.
Her first book (Ne)željeno nasleđe u prostorima pamćenja. Slobodne zone bolnih uspomena/(Un)Wanted Heritage in Remembrence Spaces. Free Zones of Painful Memories was published in 2015, as the result of pioneering research in war heritage memorialisation in Yugoslav spaces, and is the first publication of its kind in the Serbian language. Her second book Metod kao predmet ili predmet kao metod. Poučavanje (o) umetnosti u osam koraka/Method as Subject or Subject as Method. Teaching (about) Art in Eight Steps was published in 2022 and is a summary of her years of experience in the field of education through art and culture.
Public spaces and their visual culture are active participants in creating of public knowledge. That knowledge is primarily represented and recognized through monuments and/or different memorialization practices. However, how that space looks like and what politics and policies represents is never accidental. It is something that is always decided by the ruling elite. Even though that does not necessarily mean that the ruling elites are going to have a negative attitude towards the previous regime or representatives of minorities in general, in the Western Balkans region it is a rule. Changes in the domain of political climate here are very common and they can easily be traced in the public space appearance too. In those circumstances, (cultural) heritage seems to be another victim. It suffers not just for the sake of new ideology, but also in order people to forget their past. When it comes to the so-called difficult places and spaces, the situation in the domain of collective memory is even worse. It looks like we are in a vicious circle of the permanent present built on the remnants of nationalist and exclusive accounts of the past. Because of that, a progressive vision on future is missing. Silenced and marginalized memories, as well as contested histories, seem to be the dominant narratives in everyday life. The roles of certain public figures are being re-examined, the culture of cancellation is stronger; we are afraid of refugees, we blame them for diseases, the increase in unemployment, religious fanaticism. Although experts insist that culture and arts unite us, how does it happen that they actually separate us?
The basic research direction is motivated by a long-term search for an answer to the question: how can Serbs and Albanians live together again after everything that happened in Kosovo? This led to further doubts – what are our points of similarities; what kind of culture of memory do we want to cherish, whether and how heritage, that is, the past can help us in building a better future; what is the role of education in this? The focus of the research is directed at young people in Belgrade, i.e. at those who do not remember the controversial events at first hand, but formed their views about them through family stories, education, and memory policies promoted by the ruling elites. Although the problems of young people are similar in Belgrade, Kosovska Mitrovica and Priština, they do not think about how to get to know each other better and how to cooperate, or how together they can create democratic, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, open, plural, and inclusive societies.
Considering heritage as a source for knowledge seems obvious, but the aim of this project is to invite us to question it critically. My idea is to highlight specific problematic issues, but also potentials for representation involved in such difficult heritage, and to identify and analyse ways in which they can contribute to social reflection. I would also like to inspire analytical reflection on heritage and the values and power dynamics attached to it, and to facilitate dialogue about the uses of the past in the present. Cultivating a culture based on facts is indispensable. Yet, equally important is to formulate and foster a “culture of a shared future” in the region – bringing forward narratives, evidence, and politics to replace a culture of hostility with a common vision of a joint future. In that sense, this research is part of a long-standing effort to show that heritage is here to bring us together.
Péter Krekó is a think-tanker and an academic, with a background in social psychology and political science. He has a strong interest in disinformation, political polarization, conspiracy theories, and malign foreign influence. He has published extensively on these topics in academic journals and the leading international press. He is the director of the Political Capital Institute, a think tank in Budapest. It is currently the consortium leader for the Hungarian Digital Media Observatory, an anti-disinformation hub supported by the European Commission under the umbrella of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO).
Peter Kreko’s research project focuses on the social psychological processes of informational autocracies: regimes that can be successful through the manipulation of information. More specifically, he deals with the phenomena of informational autocratization in Central and Southeastern Europe, with a special focus on Hungary and Serbia. The study aims to analyze the mechanisms of state-sponsored information manipulation and explores viable strategies to counteract such practices. Drawing upon a comprehensive methodological approach that includes desktop research, interviews with key stakeholders, and comparative attitude surveys, the project seeks to shed light on the extent and impact of media centralization, the role of social-political polarization in the acceptance of disinformation, and the effectiveness of various resistance strategies employed by NGOs, journalists, and politicians. This research is important for understanding the evolving landscape of information manipulation within regimes with a hybrid nature both institutionally – combining features of democracies and autocracies – both geopolitically – with a Western and Eastern orientation at the same time. At the same time, the two neighbouring countries, while having many similar features in their politics, and professional, leader-centric spin of information, are very asymmetric in their integration into the Western institutional sytems (EU and NATO). By comparing the informational control strategies in Hungary and Serbia and extending the analysis to other Central and Southeastern European countries, the project not only provides an academic contribution to the field but also offers practical insights for policymakers, civil society, and the media to combat the challenges of informational autocracy.
Aleksandar Bošković is Lecturer in Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. He is a scholar of Russian and East European modernism, Yugoslav, post-Yugoslav and Balkan Studies, with a strong background in comparative literature, critical theory, and visual studies. He specializes in avant-garde literature and experimental art practices explored through the lenses of comparative media. He is the recipient of several grants and fellowships, including Collegium de Lyon Fellowship (2019-2020) and Michael I. Sovern/Columbia Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (2023-24). Bošković is the author of the monograph The Poetic Humor in Vasko Popa’s œuvre (2008), and co-editor of The Fine Feats of the ‘Five Cockerels’ Gang: A Yugoslav Marxist-Surrealist Epic Poem for Children (2022) and Zenithism: A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (2023).
My project investigates the relationship between negation practices across different arts and media in the former Yugoslavia—literature, film, visual arts, radio—and the notion of value(s). The aim of my project is twofold. First, it is to stress that the legacy of Yugoslav Zenithism should be recognized as the “conceptual unconscious” of the experimental art practices in Socialist Yugoslavia. The second, and more noteworthy goal is to offer a completely new perspective on negation practices of Yugoslav experimental art, bringing them in close relation to the concept of (symbolic, economic, social, and political) value(s). Value is a key issue if we perceive social worlds as a project of mutual creation, and a shared culture, as something collectively made and remade. My research contributes to the current debates on Yugoslav culture and experimental art by demonstrating that the question of value (along with the concept of “nothing” as its condition) is the kernel of vanguard cultural narratives of a shared future. It pinpoints that such a “culture of a shared future” is not one of identity, but of responsibility. Radical Yugoslav art practices remind us that the same principle applies to post-Balkans and Europeans: responsibility instead of identity.
Associate professor at the Philosophy Department of Siberian Federal University, Russia. Earned his PhD in Social Philosophy in 2007 with his dissertation on the concept of the emerging global society. He also holds an MEd degree from Kent State University, USA. Mikhail developed multiple courses in Philosophy, Critical Thinking, and Educational Technology. His research projects focus on the social implications of educational technology, the issues in digital philosophy, and various aspects of instructional technology and design for teaching philosophy.
In his research project, Mikhail explores the concepts of ‘connectedness’ and ‘seamlessness’ in relation to the philosophy of education and the philosophy of technology.
His hypothesis is that a seamless educational experience constructed by the ICT-driven educational systems has to be filled with intentional and unintentional interruptions and disruptions in order to support human agency.
Ph.D. in European and International Law. His focus of research interests is on EU external relations, particularly with Ukraine, Russia, and countries of Eastern and Southern Neighborhood.
This research offers a comparative analysis of the EU’s conditionality for the countries currently heading towards the EU membership – Ukraine and countries of the Western Balkans.
The application of the political conditionality for the CEU countries in the course of the Enlargement of 2004 was recognized as a success story. However, its further application was much less successful. The Balkan countries have always been one of the major focuses for EU foreign policy, with two countries (Croatia and Slovenia) having managed to become part of the EU and others currently being at different stages of the integration process.
Although the countries of Western Balkans and Ukraine were communist in the past, there is a number of differences between the countries from the perspective of political, social, and legal systems. Thus, the foci of the EU’s conditionality have been rather diverse. There is also a certain difference in terms of the implementation of the conditionality as well as in the outcomes.
Olha Nykorak combines being a research fellow in the sphere of constitutional law at the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and coordination of educational projects as a project and program manager at the Ukrainian Catholic University. Previously Olha conducted research in Eastern European studies at the University of Warsaw as a visiting scholar, studied international public law at the University of Tartu and conducted research at the University of Graz. She obtained her analytical skills and experience in policy design as a legal and policy advisor to a member of the Ukrainian parliament and conducting analytical reports and massive online courses in think tanks.
Olha is an alumna of the Policy Designers Network and ReThink.CEE program of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a graduate of the Polish and European Law School of the Jagiellonian University, and a European Forum Alpbach scholarship holder. Her research interests include constitutional identity, abuse of law through distorted legal narratives, European constitutional values, transnational constitutional law based on shared values, and interrelation between national and supranational law.
In the research, the concept of “identity” is going to be characterized from the point of view of philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Based on these various approaches, general traits of identity as a social collective concept will be distinguished.
The notion of constitutional identity has been frequently used for purposes of both European and internal law. Nonetheless, considering the examples of newly-formed or reevaluated constitutional identities in Ukraine and Balkan states it is necessary to reconsider its understanding not only in the context of protecting domestic law from the supranational rules, but also as the nature of the constituent power of the people which can consolidate the nation and support national security. In order to research the genesis of the constitutional identity concept, its history of origin and functions will be compared.
Universal constitutional values such as human dignity, justice, democracy, and the rule of law constitute integrating features of identity while distinguishing features are defined by national constitutional values. Among them, the most characteristic are the constitutional status of state (or official) language, constitutional preference of secularism or secularity, constitutional approach to national security, and external geopolitical orientations and forms of manifestation of national identity. All of these features will be thoroughly characterized in the research based on examples of South Eastern, Eastern and Central Europe.
The history of the creation of the constitutions of the world demonstrates: the urge for unity as the essence of the constitutional identity at the initial stage arose because of threats (it is particularly relevant for Ukraine right now). Three main values were protected foremost by the constitutions: life, security and property. In Ukraine, as a European Union candidate, constitutional identity is also changing, primarily because of harmonization of legislation with the acquis communautaire. The formation of constitutional identity can be divided into three stages: before 2014 (the Revolution of Dignity), 2014-2022, and after the 24 th of February, 2022. By 2014, the priority task was to deprive the Soviet legacy. However, in 2014, the emphasis shifted: the most important thing was to develop its own model of constitutional identity, which, moreover, confirms the aspiration for European integration.
The full-fledged war proved that Ukrainian consolidation is primarily based on constitutional values, above all – dignity and freedom. Even though cultural, religious, and linguistic borders seemed blurry, a constitutional basis is supposed to unite the nation from Lviv to Kharkiv and Kyiv to Mariupol. Thus, this research is aimed at figuring out the role of the constitutional identity of Ukrainians on territorial integrity and security and vice versa.
Oleksiy Polunin is a professor at the department of psychology of the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv. He has a PhD in psychology from the National Taras Shevchenko University (Kyiv), and a Dr. of Sciences degree (Dr. habil.) in psychology at the Institute of social and political psychology (Kyiv). The main theme of his research is human time processing, which includes such topics as individual timing mechanisms, psychological methods of time studies, the qualitative and quantitative aspects of subjective present time, cognitive coding of time direction, the temporal dimension of human experience, mental representation of time flow and decision making. In recent years he has been focusing more on philosophical topics, especially metaphysics of time.
The project belongs to cognitive science. It combines the philosophical theories of causality within the manipulability approach and the psychological findings on mental representation of time flow.
The manipulability approach to causality was chosen because it takes an action as a key variable for defining a cause. The goal is to examine how far the human cognitive system contributes to the variation of a mental representation of cause and effect. As a ground of such variation, we take the cognitive representation of time flow.
The project answers the question of whether and if yes, how far the different mental representations of time flow affect the human ability to represent causality; what are the limits of a stable causality representation?
Ekaterina Purgina holds a PhD in Philology, her research interests lie in the field of travel studies, border studies, contemporary literature, modern nomadism, and translation.
The proposed research project focuses on the narratives of crossing borders, which have become crucial for identity formation of the Russian emigrants who left the country after February 24, 2022. These narratives are constructed on social media platforms (e.g. Telegram, Instagram), are defined by the nature of online communication, and, therefore, are inseparable from the reception they get from both other emigrants seeking solidarity and host audiences articulating their attitudes to the newcomers. The narratives will be selected by applying the continuous sampling techniques to the content of Telegram channels publishing the narratives of the 2022 Russian emigrants (e.g. Ochevidtsy, NODA, individual channels created by emigrants).
The research questions that this study seeks to address are as follows: How are spatial and temporal borders experienced and conceptualized in the narratives of the new Russian emigrants? What narratives are used by the emigrants to construct and present their new identity? How do they explain their choices to other emigrants and to their new hosts?
The analysis will focus on three dimensions of borders and border-crossing: spatial, temporal, and social. The spatial aspect deals primarily with the crossing of physical borders. The temporal aspect refers to the before/after borderline dividing the emigrants’ lives, their perceptions of this ‘borderline’ event as well as border temporalities. Finally, the social aspect concerns the divisions that occurred in the narrators’ familial and social environment after 24 February 2022. This aspect also encompasses the relationships that the emigrants seek to establish with their host communities and other emigrants.
Sergei Shevchenko is involved in bioethics and medical humanities as a researcher, educator, and expert. He obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy on “Personalized Medicine: Philosophical and Methodological Analyses” at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. He also holds a master’s degree in biology.
Sergei organized academic and public discussions on the rights of future generations, epistemic justice, and human enhancement. In 2020, he published a book entitled “Hope: Found and Invented,” which deals with the history of bacteriophage therapy and the role of collective intellectual virtues in its development.
Cognitive studies show that trauma survivors tend to experience specific forms of memory decline. This is an issue not only for medicine and cognitive science but also for bio- or neuroethics and social justice.
Traumatic experiences cause refugees to impoverish their own cognitive niches for the sake of oblivion. Incessant watching TV and reduction of communication networks with all their negative impact on memory can be strategies for adaptation to the new social environment. This form of adaptation is not a manifestation of either biological or social pathology itself but is a consequence of social pathologies that caused traumatic events and the need to flee from them. Accordingly, the desire for oblivion among refugees and residence-changers of different ages should not induce a medical or social stigma. We also can consider re-traumatization caused by the need to recall negative experiences as a specific form of epistemic injustice.
Ethical strategies for dealing with such refugees are required, which include respecting their autonomy and dignity as well as creating a new, more inclusive cognitive environment.
Dmitrii Trubnikov has a joint PhD degree (in Law) from Tilburg University and Bologna University, and a Candidate of Economic Sciences degree (the Russian name for PhD in Economics) from Samara State University of Economics. From 2019 to 2022 he worked as Associate Professor of the Department of Management at Saint Petersburg School of Economics and Management of HSE University (Russia), where he was also Academic Director of the Master in International Business program.
Dmitrii’s PhD research “The Competitive Order for the New Economy: Lessons from the Telecommunications Experience” was focused on the evolution of the European telecommunication sphere and its regulation. Currently, the areas of his research interests are connected to political economy, technological development, and public policy.
The current research aims to analyze the evolution of the Russian segment of the internet (Runet) through the “generations of information controls” framework with a particular focus on the rent-seeking nature of Russian society.
While it is clear that technological changes bring new powerful tools to the hands of authoritarian rulers, an explanation of this phenomenon from purely political perspectives would oversimplify the problem.
On the one hand, authoritarian leaders indeed have enormous benefits from turning their countries into a kind of Orwellian surveillance world. On the other hand, countries like Russia widely exploit market mechanisms, and it is reasonable to assume that precisely the market sphere within the existing institutional arrangements strengthens the power of these regimes.
Nana Gulic is a doctoral student at OISE’s Social Justice Education department with a specialization in Comparative International and Development Education.
She has a Master’s degree in Social Justice and Equity Studies from Brock University and a Bachelor’s degree in Child and Youth Care from Ryerson University.
Nana has done policy work with the Croatian Ministry of Education and served as a nationwide trainer and mentor for teachers and staff specialists during the national education reform (2015-2020).
She has been involved in many projects with international education organizations including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Centre for Innovation in Education (ICIE), and the Teacher Taskforce.
Her research interests are in citizenship education, transnational feminisms, postsocialism, and education policy.
In 2006 she was a Visiting Fellow at the Refugee Studies Centre, at Oxford University. From 2011-2016 she was an executive director of UNHCR’s only research center for refugee and IDP studies in the Western Balkans (CESI). Between 2014-2017 she led the SDC’s RRPP (Fribourg University) 3-year-funded, cross-country project that employed 28 researchers looking into the long-term effects of war-displacement and protracted socio-political transitions in Serbia, Kosovo, and BiH. In 2012 she founded International Summer Schools in Refugee Law and Rights with late, OBE Professor Emerita Barbara Harrell-Bond.
She has taught refugee law, humanitarian studies, psychology, and social anthropology at various universities in Scandinavia, the UK, Western Balkans, and Central Europe.
Selma Porobić holds a Ph.D. degree in migration studies from Lund University in Sweden, combined with postgraduate studies at the American University in Cairo and a professional diploma in International Humanitarian Assistance from Fordham University in New York.
She is currently a program manager of the Aurora European Universities Alliance at the Rector’s office of Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic, and a work package leader for the Capacity Development Program in Central-Eastern Europe, coordinating Ukraine support on behalf of 9 Aurora universities.
She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London and a governing board member of the Research Network ‘Transnational Memory and Identity‘ for the Council for European Studies, Colombia University, New York.
Dr. Porobić has published on a variety of issues focusing on war displacement and post-war recovery with cross-cutting themes of human rights, gender, mental health, and education.
Recently, her research is focused on social trauma in post-conflict societies and peace education. Her latest book, co-edited with Brad Blitz, is entitled Forced Migration, Gender, and Wellbeing. The Long-term Effects of Displacement on Women (Edward Elgar Publishing, UK).
Nebojša Kujundžić’s administrative experience at the University of Prince Edward Island includes serving as the Philosophy Department Chair, as a member of the Board of Governors, and as the Dean of Arts.
Nebojša Kujundžić studied Philosophy and Literature at the University of Sarajevo, ex-Yugoslavia. His philosophical mindset has always been characterized by the desire to bridge the divide between the so-called Continental (European) and the Analytic (Anglo-Saxon) style of philosophy.
He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo, Ontario and his teaching experience includes Wilfrid Laurier University, Cape Breton University, University of Prince Edward Island, and University of Belgrade. University of Malta appointed him as Affiliate Professor in January 2019. His research interests include Philosophy of Technology, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language and Metaphysics.
Dominique van de Klundert is a YUFE postdoctoral researcher from Aotearoa, New Zealand. She holds a BA in Art History and Visual Culture, a Graduate Diploma in Education, a BA (Honours) in Museums and Cultural Heritage, and a PhD in Visual Cultures.
Dominique van de Klundert‘s doctoral research developed a media archaeology-informed ‘stereographic’ methodology for de/colonising visual heritage research, combining 3D photographic imaging with the Latin American personal-political oral history narrative form of testimonio to simulate a conversation among residents of contested UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Bolivia and Palestine. Other projects analysed the evidentiary status and heritage qualities of the documentary photographs of early Australian photographer J.W. Lindt and critically investigated the use of criminal death masks in the intersecting practice of phrenology and development of neuroscience at the University of Melbourne’s medical school. Having served as a travel and academic editor, she also supported innovative research dissemination in video format as a participant in the ‘Science & Startups’ programme of the Berlin University Alliance. Her current project investigates the ways in which eco-discourse around designated international ‘dark sky’ communities combating light pollution in Europe and the UK suggests a resurgence of the notion of ‘planetary heritage’.
Christian Costamagna earned his PhD degree in Historical Sciences from the University of Eastern Piedmont with a doctoral dissertation about the political reforms in Serbia and Yugoslavia and the ascent to power of Milošević during the second half of the 1980s. He holds a MA in International Relations and Human Rights from the University of Turin.
Christian Costamagna has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies South Eastern Europe (CAS SEE) of the University of Rijeka, a Visegrad Fund fellow at the Vera and Donald Blinken Open Society Archives in Budapest, and an EEGA Leibniz Campus fellow at the University of Leipzig (Department of History). He participated in various international conferences, seminars, and summer schools, and lectured at universities. Among his main research interests, related to the recent past, are the causes of the dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the Kosovo War, and the politics in Serbia in the 1990s, he is also an observer of the current political issues in the Western Balkans. Christian is currently conducting research on the Kosovo War and the 1999 NATO military intervention against Yugoslavia.
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Paul Stubbs is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia. He has lived in Croatia since 1993 and was an anti-war activist in the 1990s.
His research interests include global social policy, policy translation, new left-green urban political movements, poverty and social exclusion, history of Yugoslav socialism, and the Non-Aligned Movement. His books include Social Inequalities and Discontent in Yugoslav Socialism (edited with Rory Archer and Igor Duda, Routledge, 2016), Making Policy Move (with John Clarke, Dave Bainton and Noemi Lendvai, Policy Press, 2015), and Socialist Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement (edited, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). He is currently working on a history of the New International Economic Order to be published by Routledge.
Dragana Mrvoš is a University of Tampa Lecturer and SIGS Alumni. She has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award in political science and government to Croatia for the 2024-2025 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
In collaboration with the Center for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe (CAS SEE) at the University of Rijeka, her research project, “Return Migration and Democracy in Croatia: The Potential of Social Remittances” will explore how return migrants, individuals voluntarily returning to the country of origin after living, studying, and working abroad participate in numerous ways in economic life, educational system, and cultural events of Croatia. The project will provide preliminary findings on ideas and strategies of return migrants who participate in social reforms in Croatia as well as preferences and challenges of returnees who participated in knowledge gaining and sharing and worked closely with other countries. Findings will be relevant to other Eastern and Southeastern European countries that experience unusually large and persistent emigration, dominated by educated and young people. This award will also be a unique opportunity to initiate and establish future partnership and connections between the preeminent academic institutions in Croatia and the United States.