Part of Central European Talks 2021

History, Memory and the Politics of Naming in the Balkans

Srdja Pavlović, Research Associate, Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

About Srdja Pavlović

Born in Montenegro and educated in his home country as well as in Serbia, Mongolia, Great Britain, and Canada, Dr. Srdja Pavlović is a prominent Balkan historian, an experienced college and university teacher, able researcher as well as supervisor, editor and literary translator. He is currently teaching at the Department of History and Classics (University of Alberta). Dr. Pavlović also taught at Grant MacEwan University, and at the Portage College.

He authored historical monographs in English and Serbo-Croatian languages, such as Balkan Anschluss: The Annexation of Montenegro and the Creation of the Common South Slavic State (2008); Prostori Identiteta: Eseji o Istoriji, Sjećanju i Interpretacijama Prošlosti (2006); Iza Ogledala: Eseji o Politici Identiteta (2004); Zapadna Ljuljaška (1997); Mongolski Piktogram (1989) and edited scholarly collections and literary anthologies such as Transcending Fratricide: Political Myths, Reconciliations and the Uncertain Future in the former Yugoslavia (2013) and Treshold: Anthology of Contemporary Writing from Alberta (1998). He also authored over twenty articles in peer reviewer journals worldwide.

Dr. Pavlović is an associate editor of Nationality Papers (Columbia University) and Treaties and Documents(University of Maribor), and the North American coordinator for the research projects Direct Democracy and Active Citizenship: Case Study of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was the founding member of the Montenegrin political party, Movement for Changes (PzP). Dr. Pavlovic was also the member of the Advisory Councils for the Montenegrin political coalition, Democratic Front (DF).

At present, Dr. Pavlović is working on the second phase of his multi-year research program entitled Nation (Re)Building in the Post-Yugoslav Space. This phase of the program focuses on the comparative analysis of the processes of nation (re)building in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina (case studies). These countries are terrain where contested ethnic and national identities are still struggling to gain the upper hand over one another, while the state structures are attempting to accommodate local, regional and broader European demands. Each ethnic group and nation living in both countries either claims historical right to those states or regards them as unjust impositions upon their right to self-determination. Each group cherishes symbolic geographies of their own while denying to other the right to their own imaginary national landscapes. The aim of Dr. Pavlović's research is to analyze four parameters of identity controversies often found in the new states in Europe and Eurasia: religion, ethnicity, historical imagination, and geographical imagination.

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