Center for Advanced Studies (CSA)

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Regional Network of Centers for Advanced Studies in Southeast Europe

The Center for Advanced Studies (CSA) is a strategic connecting point between UP and partner universities and international organizations to provide postdoctoral study opportunities focused on addressing issues of social interest for Kosovo, the region, and beyond.

Centers of Advanced Studies are organizational units of universities that specialize in advanced research in various scientific fields with the aim of scientific progress and regional and global institutional cooperation. CAS aims to serve as a platform of advanced scientific discussion for the advancement of knowledge and, through it, the perspective of the Western Balkans region, enabling scientific researchers from the region to interact, develop joint research, and use research infrastructure for the development of research projects; as well as provide opportunities for researchers to develop ideas, projects, and scientific and applied research with a focus on the context of the Western Balkans and its advancement towards the values of the European Union through scientific and applied research.

As for contact information, I would go with the contact number at the rectorate as we do not yet have an established unit or office.

+383 38 244 183

Contact

Vehap Kola

Eco-Digital Imaginaries and Youth Agency in the Western Balkans is a longitudinal qualitative study of how young people imagine, and try to build political and ecological alternatives under democratic strain, economic precarity, and accelerating digital platform influence. The project focuses on “eco-digital imaginaries”: future-oriented narratives where climate concerns, everyday livelihood pressures, and digitally mediated public life collide.

It asks three core questions: (1) how youth articulate desirable futures (political, ecological, and European) and how these change over time; (2) how platform dynamics (visibility, algorithms, harassment, misinformation, moderation) shape what feels thinkable and doable; and (3) when imaginaries translate into concrete practices, such as organizing, coalition-building, civic participation, or policy-relevant proposals, and when they stall.

Methodologically, the study combines (a) longitudinal mobile audio diaries (weekly short voice notes), (b) small deliberative futures workshops (to test and refine ideas with participants), and (c) light digital trace ethnography to contextualize narratives without expanding data collection beyond what is ethically necessary. Outputs include a theory contribution on how eco-digital imaginaries form and travel into action, an anonymized longitudinal qualitative dataset, and public-facing deliverables such as a workshop toolkit, a policy brief, and a lightweight prototype aligned with a policy hackathon.

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Vehap Kola

Dr. Vehap Kola is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of New York Tirana and an organization studies scholar focused on future-making: how people and organizations build futures through stories, imagination, and selection mechanisms that turn ideas into “rules” in strategy and policy.

He holds a PhD in Management & Organization from Marmara University (2022), where he examined future imaginaries in public strategy-making through the Tirana Master Plan (TR030). He later conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Cagliari (2024–2025) on how entrepreneurs and venture capitalists prospect desirable solutions to grand challenges, drawing on Doughnut Economics and multi-modal qualitative materials.

At RECAS, he develops a comparative, ethics-led program on youth agency and eco-digital imaginaries in the Western Balkans. Methodologically, he combines longitudinal mobile audio diaries, deliberative futures workshops (including backcasting and layered analysis), and light, transparent digital trace ethnography to track how imaginaries evolve over time and when they translate into action, coalitions, and policy-relevant outputs.

vehapkola@unyt.edu.al

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Vanja Ashkapova

How do young people in North Macedonia imagine their migration futures? And how can their voices reshape migration governance in the Western Balkans? This research builds on the ongoing North Macedonia anticipatory governance pilot, the project focuses on one of the region’s highest youth emigration contexts to examine how individual mobility scenarios intersect with demographic challenges and new political imaginaries. Through in‑depth interviews and participatory scenario workshops with 20–25 young people in Skopje, the study documents youth migration scenarios, elicits their own policy recommendations, and tests small‑scale foresight methods that connect youth futures thinking to formal policy processes. The project treats youth as policy experts and political agents rather than passive targets of intervention, asking what governance approaches, structural changes, and participatory mechanisms they see as necessary to remain in or return to North Macedonia. Expected outputs include a policy brief for national and international stakeholders (e.g. the Migration Policy 2026–2030), and a framework for embedding youth voices in migration foresight contributing to more inclusive, future‑oriented and regionally relevant migration policies.

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Vanja Ashkapova

Vanja Ashkapova is a researcher specializing in governance, anticipatory policymaking, and migration, with a focus on the Western Balkans and North Macedonia. She is currently a PhD candidate in Political Sciences at the South East European University in North Macedonia, where her doctoral research examines anticipatory governance approaches to migration policy. She holds a master’s degree in communication from Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje.

With more than a decade of experience in European projects, civil society, international organizations, and the UN in North Macedonia, she has worked on initiatives related to human mobility, human rights, and refugee protection. Her work is strongly oriented toward engaging diverse stakeholders, building coalitions and alliances across institutions and communities, and fostering inclusive dialogue with state actors, civil society, academia, and affected populations.

Her professional experience includes several years within the United Nations system and other international organizations, where she supported programmes focused on asylum and refugee rights, community-based protection, and strengthening national institutional capacities. Through this work, she has developed in-depth knowledge of the interplay between international norms, national policymaking, and local implementation practices, particularly in complex and politically sensitive environments.

She brings a practice-informed and context-sensitive perspective to research and public policymaking, grounded in long-term engagement with diverse actors, institutions, and policy processes.

askapova@gmail.com

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Srđan Kukolj

This research examines how delayed responses to environmental risks in Southeast Europe reshape youth rights and political practices through eco digital discourses. It is grounded in the premise that ecological postponement constitutes a violation of intergenerational equity, producing long term consequences for public health, democratic participation, and social belonging. The study focuses on how young people experience environmental exposure as a form of vulnerability and how these experiences are translated into political meaning and claims for accountability in digital spaces. Drawing on interviews, an online survey, and digital ethnography conducted across eight Southeast European states, the research analyses how youth articulate imaginaries of belonging, ownership, and aspiration in response to ecological risk. Particular attention is given to the metaphors and narratives through which environmental harm is framed as a rights based concern rather than a technical policy issue. The project demonstrates how eco digital practices enable young people to reposition themselves as producers of political knowledge and contributors to democratic renewal, offering insights relevant to environmental health policy and youth participation in the region.

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Srđan Kukolj

Srđan Kukolj is a public health expert and policy analyst based in Belgrade, with more than twenty years of professional experience in Europe. His career has been firmly rooted in public health practice, where he has worked extensively on issues of population health, health systems, and access to services, before progressively concentrating on environmental health policy as a central field of expertise. This trajectory has enabled him to develop a deeper understanding of how environmental risks translate into public health outcomes and how institutional responses shape long term health and rights implications. His analytical work is informed by a rights based perspective, ethics, with particular attention to vulnerable populations, intergenerational equity, social interactions and the democratic implications of environmental health risks. His work combines applied public health research with policy analysis and public health management, with a strong emphasis on translating evidence into governance processes. He has coordinated and managed complex national and regional initiatives addressing the health consequences of environmental exposure, particularly in relation to air pollution and delayed ecological action. Across these projects, he has engaged closely with public institutions, academia, civil society organisations, and international partners, contributing to policy development and institutional accountability.

k.srdjan@gmail.com

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René Bogović

The current project is a feasibility pilot addressing my proposition that the recent rise of new minority speakers of Italian and Slovene among majority youth on both sides of the former Yugoslav border disrupts and creolizes established hegemonic ethnolinguistic boundaries. Focusing on Croatia, I will conduct 3-5 in-depth interviews with recent graduates of the Italian High School in Rijeka with no Italophone family members to delineate how these youth construct, maintain, and disrupt ethnolinguistic boundaries. I will then examine the viability of these identitarian disruptions as blueprints for transethnic youth solidarity across Southeastern Europe, including their potential to address crises in governance and environmental degradation.

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René Bogović

René Bogović is a recent PhD graduate in sociology from the University of Toronto. Building upon his background in documentary filmmaking, psychology, and languages, René crosses disciplinary boundaries by integrating historical analysis and participatory methods into his immersive ethnographies. A child of the Balkans educated across India, Italy, and Canada, he strives to establish theoretically and politically actionable transregional conversations. Connecting unlikely contexts such as the multiracial Afrikaans speech community in South Africa and the multilingual Northern Adriatic borderlands between Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy, his work centers language, multilingualism, and creolization as forces for inclusive group boundary-making.

rene.bogovic@mail.utoronto.ca

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Nemanja Batrićević

The success of democracy heavily depends on citizens’ engagement in the democratic process and their attitudes towards democracy. Rather than existing in isolation, democratic beliefs form a network of interconnected attitudes known as the democratic belief system (DBS). Understanding the structure of DBS across different age cohorts is crucial for assessing youth movements’ abilities to mobilize wider public against the erosion of democratic institutions and norms. This research project proposes conceptualizing DBS as a network of attitudes and analyzes its structure ( density , consistency , centrality ) in order to tackle a number of previously unanswered questions: How similar is the structure of DBS between countries of the WB? How coherent is DBS across age cohorts within WB countries? How youth’s vision of democracy affects the pattern of political participation and society’s resilience to democratic backsliding?

Project proposes comparative analysis of DBS, composed of eight dimensions (features of democracy), using European Social Survey (ESS) Rounds 6 and 10, which is a rare example of international survey containing comparable survey items on evaluation of democracy in the Western Balkan countries.

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Nemanja Batrićević

Nemanja Batrićević is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Montenegro. He holds PhD in Comparative Politics from the Central European University. His primary interests include voting behaviour, psychology of group relations, nationalism and democratization. In terms of scope, although not exclusively, the focus of his research is mostly on the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. During his studies, he also specialized in the field of quantitative research method in social sciences. At the Faculty of Political Science, he teaches courses Political System of Montenegro, Comparative Public Policy , Methodology in Political Science and Advanced Methods of Political Science Research . His previous academic work on has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Democratization, East European Politics, Politics, Europe-Asia Studies and Social Justice Research .

nemanja.batricevic@gmail.com

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Julija Perhat

Speaking Futures: Youth, Slurs, and the Politics of Language examines how young people in Croatia and the wider Western Balkans use, interpret, and contest slurs as part of their everyday and online linguistic practices. Positioned at the intersection of philosophy of language and political epistemology the project investigates slurs not only as offensive expressions but as tools through which youth negotiate identity, belonging, and political possibility. Recent national data showing the widespread presence of hate speech among Croatian youth, combined with escalating uses of slurs in public and digital spaces, underscore the urgency of this inquiry. Digital platforms further complicate these dynamics: the rapid circulation of slurs through memes, videos, and viral posts intersects with shifting moderation policies, enabling new—and at times more permissive—forms of political expression.

Focusing on youth agency, the project explores how slurs shape boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, reinforce or challenge nationalist narratives, and participate in political polarization. A central component is a bilingual survey conducted in Croatia and Serbia, designed to document the frequency and contexts of slur encounters, identify which slurs are perceived as most and least offensive, and capture youth reflections on how such language relates to nationalism, Europe, and community belonging. Comparative and interpretive analyses will illuminate both cross-linguistic patterns and culturally specific meanings.

By integrating empirical data with conceptual analysis, the project offers a new lens for understanding how linguistic practices influence youth political imaginaries in a region marked by historical tensions, democratic fragility, and evolving digital governance. The findings will contribute to academic scholarship as well as policy-oriented discussions through public presentations and collaborative workshops. Ultimately, the project aims to generate actionable insights into how slurs shape youth culture and political engagement, and how more inclusive and participatory futures in the Western Balkans might be imagined.

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Julija Perhat

Julija Perhat earned her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Rijeka in 2025. Her interdisciplinary research sits at the intersection of philosophy of language, epistemology, and political philosophy, with a central focus on the ethical, semantic, and political implications of pejoratives, slurs, and the broader linguistic structures that influence social power dynamics.

She has authored several publications, co-edited an academic volume, co-authored a high-school textbook on Philosophy and has forthcoming research that continues to expand the theoretical landscape on slurs and polarization. She frequently presents at international conferences.

Perhat collaborates on the project Epistemic Challenges of Populism (University of Rijeka) and on the international project Learning Amidst Disinformation and Social Conflict , funded by research councils in the UK, Croatia, and Canada. She has also led several science-popularization projects aimed at strengthening public understanding of philosophical issues. She further deepened her research as a visiting researcher at the Institute of Philosophy (Slovak Academy of Sciences) in Bratislava, where she spent four months working within an international academic network.

She contributes to academic community building as course director of the Philosophy of Language and Linguistics conference in Dubrovnik and through her roles in research centers such as Center for Women’s Studies (Rijeka), HDAF (Rijeka) and Center for Language Research (Rijeka).

Julija.perhat@gmail.com

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Jing Wu

This research project investigates the divergent manifestations of global youth climate activism in the post-socialist Balkans, focusing on the comparative cases of Slovenia and Serbia. Despite sharing a Yugoslav socialist heritage, these nations now navigate distinct political trajectories: Slovenia as a consolidated EU member and Serbia as a candidate country facing protracted accession negotiations. This divergence provides a unique lens to analyze how differing political ecologies and relationships with the European Union shape the narratives of the “green transition” on Europe’s periphery.

The research focuses on two movements, Mladi za podnebno pravičnost in Slovenia and Ekološki ustanak in Serbia. It analyses their official websites, Facebook pages and hashtag ecosystems (for example #FridaysForFuture, #NeDamoJadar, #EkološkiUstanak), treating these digital traces as sites where climate narratives are produced, circulated and contested. Combining digital ethnography with narrative analysis and critical discourse analysis, the project investigates how activists define problems and responsibilities, imagine “green futures,” and position themselves in relation to the state, corporations and the European Union.

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Jing Wu

Jing Wu is a Ph.D. candidate in the field of Public Relations at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. Her academic background is rooted in strategic communication and the analysis of digital public opinion. Before focusing on environmental issues, she established a strong track record in researching social media phenomena, employing semantic network and sentiment analysis to understand public discourse during health crises and uncertain times.

Building on her expertise in digital narratives and data-driven communication, her current research pivots to the climate crisis. Specifically, she is conducting a comparative digital ethnography on youth climate narratives in Slovenia and Serbia, investigating how digital platforms serve as arenas for constructing “green futures” in transitional political contexts.

Jing holds a Master of Marketing Communications from the University of Melbourne. Prior to her doctoral studies, she served as a Public Relations Director in the art and cultural enterprise in China, a role that grounded her academic inquiries in substantial industry practice.

jw0822@student.uni-lj.si

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Dragana Mrvoš

In an ongoing ‘age of migration’, various studies measure the benefits and losses of migration in terms of monetary gains, while social capital (social remittances) remains a rather neglected aspect. Ideas about political remittances (as a particular subcategory of social remittances) as inherently ‘democratising’ also remain trapped in the notion that migrants ‘send back good norms’ from largely Global North to largely Global South contexts, rather than acknowledging ongoing circulation. To fill the gap in understanding the remittance patterns among migrants from their origin and destination contexts, this study will test the assumption of the democratising nature of political remittances from migrants living in consolidated, liberal democracies. In operationalizing the key term of democratic structures, this study will explore a pro-democratic push in the economy in addition to democracy in politics. Put differently, if the goal is to influence policy to democratise unequal power relations, a pro-democratic push shall be concerned with the struggle for democracy in politics and the economy. How does the migratory movement of youth, which is often provisional, impact the relations with authorities, identities, and politicised topics such as abortion laws, gender relations, political strategies of campaigning, and so on? What’s behind migrants’ assessments of the economy in the origin and destination context? What are their top economic concerns? What are the expectations and future imaginaries among youth migrants about the economy? By encompassing political and economic aspects as deeply intertwined, findings based on surveys and interviews with young migrants, individuals between the ages of 18 and 35 who voluntarily or involuntarily leave their country of origin (i.e., Serbia and Croatia) to study and work in Germany, Austria, and the United States, will shed more light to whether and how migration contributes to democratic change or prevents it from occurring.

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Dragana Mrvoš

While growing up in Serbia and witnessing sweeping historical changes at the end of the 20 th century, including the fall of Communism and, in the case of former Yugoslavia, the formation of new nation-states through a series of brutal wars, I initially became interested in political theory and questions with respect to oppression. I came to understand that national oppression was one of the reasons for the country’s collapse, but not the only one. The economic disparity between more and less industrialized regions, and expansionist tendencies from different countries, came to full display by the 1990s. Then, in the field of political science during my graduate studies, I explored the transformations of socialism and its convergences with capitalism within broader global processes. Significant reforms were launched in both capitalist (neoliberalism) and socialist (perestroika) economies, and modern technology and communications made all of us uneasy neighbors, showing their lethal potential as well as liberating capabilities.

My dissertation followed in that vein of re-examining the power of technology. When the economic crisis of 2008 set the stage for the expansion of gig jobs, a widely contested debate sparked over the benefits and shortcomings that the new type of work brings and over the social implications that it has. My dissertation analyzed structural characteristics of the digital platform economy and the global political landscape increasingly riddled by crises. I aimed to help set the intellectual agenda for thinking about collective labor and grassroots organizing as economic and political emergencies unfold. Completed research also forged a new interpretation of flexibility and freedom on digital platforms and examined the relationship between material dispossession, social alienation, and labor organizing.

Recently, I extended my research into urban systems and a series of massive and parallel changes conditioned by the geographic dispersal of economic activities, integration of labor markets, and migration. As a part of the Fulbright Global Scholar Program 2024/2025, I undertook a 4-month-long empirical research project in collaboration with CAS SEE at the University of Rijeka (Croatia). This project aimed to understand how the City of Rijeka is restructured and reimagined from an industrial to a knowledge city, and the range of experiences of the labor migrants in the city’s transformation. Although the same imperative to work shapes migration from one state to another and from countryside to an urban center within a state, post-industrial transformation intensifies material disparity among different migrant groups, resulting in new types of social fabric, exclusion, and policy proposals.

As part of the 2025/2026 RECAS cohort, my primary interests will be in international migration, comparative evaluations and reflections on how things work ‘here’ and ‘there’ among migrants and whether migration contributes to democratic change in politics and economy or prevents it from occurring.

dragana.mrvos@gmail.com

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Đorđe Krivokapić

Resistance Protocol: Modeling Youth Agency under Digital Authoritarianism

This project investigates how youth in hybrid regimes build collective capacity for democratic change using alternative communication technologies and decentralised mobilisation practices.