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Study Groups

Our research falls into two broad fields:

Ethnographic Methods and Research Ethics

The study group provides a platform for discussing issues around ethnographic methodology, research design and research ethics in the ongoing research carried out by members of the Graduate School for East and Southeast Europen Studies (GS OSES) at the UR.

It caters for PhD researchers and postdocs, as well as other researchers who carry out qualitative research with living subjects - as is the case mainly in ethnographic fieldwork, digital etnography or netnography (online research using social media for example), oral history research, and research based on various types of (expert) interviews. The study group is also open to historians who wish to engage with recent debates around the research ethics of using archival, visual, and other sources pertaining to deceased subjects, for example victims of political violence.

In each session one study group member will discuss methodological problems and dilemmas around research design and research ethics in their project. To reflect on these issues we will read and discuss recent theoretical and methodological contributions relevant to the topic.

Group Leaders:

Members and Projects

  • Andi Balla, M.A. 
    Effects of Public Narratives on Demographics: The Case of Albania, 1980-2010
  • Miloš Đurović, M.A. 
    Coping with Pollution in a Coal-Mining town on the periphery of Montenegro
  • Rina Geci, M.A.
    Contemporary Medical Pluralism in Kosovo: Practices, Markets, Politics
  • Fatos Hoxha, M.A.
    A Transformation from below. Understanding Workers’ Lives in the Trepca Industrial Complex during 1960-1980
  • Oleksandr Nadtoka, M.A.
    Historical Forensics and Historians as Expert Witnesses at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
  • Yulia Pyankova, M.A.
    The Symbol is Born: Commemoration of Contemporary Russian Assassinations
  • Sara Žerić Đulović, M.A.
    Gastarbeiters as the Factor of Modernization in Socialist Yugoslavia (1968–1989)

Representation, Narrations

This study group brings together PhD researchers and senior scholars from a range of disciplines, including history, political science, linguistics, and cultural studies. Research projects of study group members address different forms of representations based on discourses, knowledge, and practices. We are interested in highlighting the underlying dynamics of knowledge production and relate them to locally bound social practices. This is an eminent task for Area Studies, which tap into local knowledge and serve as translators between different knowledge spaces. An important aspect concerns the representation of knowledge in relation to principles of categorization. Through joint readings, the discussion of the applicability of various approaches in different disciplines, and the presentation of individual dissertation chapters, the study group aims at enhancing interdisciplinary exchange. Our study group is based on the assumption that learning about different approaches to investigate the same phenomenon creates new ideas for any project. 

Group Leaders:

Members and Projects

  • Yasyn Abdullaev, M.A.
    (Doctoral Visiting Fellow 2024 - Berkeley)

  • Magdalena Daller, M.A.
    Essen und nationale Identität in kulinarischen Stadtlandschaften. Reisen von St. Petersburg über Odessa nach Tbilissi im 19. Jahrhundert

  • Lena-Marie Franke, M.A.
    Early Narratives of the Shoah in Czech Literature
  • Nikola Gajić, M.A.
    “I Solemnly Declare that I will Speak the Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing by the Truth”: Afterlife of the ICTY Victims’ Testimonies
  • Tereza Juhászová, M.A.

    (Doctoral Visiting Fellow 2024/25)
    Post-WWII Coexistence in an East Slovak Small-Town

  • Oleksandr Nadtoka, M.A.
    Historical Forensics and Historians as Expert Witnesses at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 
  • Maksym Snihyr, M.A.
    (Doctoral Visiting Fellow 2024-2025 – DAAD)
  • Olga Trufanova, M.A.
    Absorbing the Asian Frontier: Food and Food-Related Knowledge in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Siberia
  • Sara Žerić Đulović, M.A.
    Gastarbeiters as the Factor of Modernization in Socialist Yugoslavia (1968–1989)

Former Study Groups