Projects

Competitive research projects

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Principal investigator: Boris Jokić, Ph.D.Project start: 01.04.2023.

Critical ChangeLab - Democracy meets arts: Critical change labs for building democratic cultures through creative and narrative practices

The Critical ChangeLab project aims to reinvigorate the relationship between youth and democracy, and consequently the future of 21st Century European democracy. This is achieved by spearheading the reach and impact of the Critical ChangeLab Model of Democratic Pedagogy, fostering youth's active democratic citizenship at a time where polarisation, deep political divisions and declining trust in democracy are spreading across Europe.

Principal investigator for ISRZ: Jelena Matić Bojić, Ph.D.Project start: 28.02.2021.

HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges

HAND IN HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity related career challenges is a policy experimentation project that brings together 11 partners from six countries. The main goal of the project is to support the development of teachers’ social and emotional competencies as well as their diversity awareness (SEDA) in order to equip them for the complexities of working with increasingly diverse classes and to enable them to deal flexibly with new challenges. The project also puts teachers’ well-being at the centre by highlighting how developing SEDA competencies simultaneously fosters self-care for teachers, giving a central role to the voices of teachers.

Principal investigator: Nikola Petrović, Ph.D.Project start: 24.02.2020.

Integration and disintegration of the European Union: Dynamics of Europeanism and Euroscepticism

The question of EU disintegration is becoming increasingly important and there is a growing number of research on the topic, both theoretical and empirical. In this project, the development and dynamics of Europeanism and Euroscepticism will be compared based on an interdisciplinary approach and by employing innovative comparative methodology and for this purpose seldom employed sociological theories. The ideas of Europeanism and Euroscepticism are crucial for understanding the processes of integration and disintegration in the times of intensive social polarization. As part of the project, we plan to conduct qualitative comparison of carriers of Europeanist and Eurosceptic ideas coming from political and intellectual elites in five Member States from different phases of the EU enlargement process (Germany, UK, Spain, Poland, and Croatia). Further on, we will carry out a quantitative comparison of the way in which historical trauma influenced the success of Eurosceptic parties in all EU Member States. The results should contribute to the comprehension of the influence that different historical experiences had on various visions of European integration in divided European societies. The comparison of political and intellectual actors engaged in building supranational identities and their adversaries, in socialist Yugoslavia and the EU, should provide a deeper understanding of integrational and disintegrational processes in supranational organizations. The research and dissemination activities of the project should contribute to the de-ideologization of European integration and European identity debates within the scientific and broader community.

Principal investigator: Lana Peternel, Ph.D.Project start: 01.10.2022.

Isolated People and Communities in Slovenia and Croatia – ISOLATION

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought several relevant issues to the forefront, including physical and social isolation, which is the focus of this project. We will use an anthropological approach to explain what it means to be isolated. Through ethnographic studies in isolated social spaces and abandoned areas, we will show how isolation shapes the experiences of insularity and emptiness in urban and rural areas among individuals and communities in Slovenia and Croatia. We will also explore how different modalities of isolation shape experiences, values, and attitudes toward the environment and the future.

Principal investigator: Anja Gvozdanović, Ph.D.Project start: 01.01.2023.

MOJ DOM. Refugees, migration and erased memories in the aftermath of Yugoslav wars

The project's general objective is to address the difficult heritage of which the Western Balkans are bearers by employing a multidisciplinary approach. It concerns the relationship towards past recognized as significant, problematic, controversial and even embarrassing, at the same time having a prominent role in shaping political and social present in post-conflict societies. The project raises the awareness of common European history among its citizens, highlighting small-scale historical events on local and community level, to create a link between global, continental and local histories and highlight the connection between historical events and their relevance for the present times. At the same time, the project promotes new tools for research, historical dissemination and education on these topics. Furthermore, by encouraging the mutual share of knowledge and expertise between the several involved institutions, the project raises awareness of the links between the involved countries and creates a connection between European and local histories. While focusing on the past, the project could also offer the opportunity to discuss future enlargements in the Western Balkans and in the South Eastern Europe area. The consortium involved in the project creation and implementation is composed of different institutions: memorial studies centers, university departments, theater company organizations, oral history organization, public-history and educational organizations, and independent research organizations. The target groups are: university students, researchers, academics, memory workers, high school students and young adults, educators and teachers, performative artists, citizens from four European countries. They will be included in the following project activities: historical research, planning of educations, didactic dissemination and public dissemination rework on the present.