Remembering the 2001 armed conflict in Macedonia: Modes of commemorating and memorialization
2022-10-04
– 2022-10-04
09:30
– 11:00
- ONLINE
- English
We kindly invite you to a seminar during which we'll discuss Naum Trajanovski's paper on "Remembering the 2001 armed conflict in Macedonia: Modes of commemorating and memorialization" together with Jelena Ɖureinović and Emina Zoletić.
Please register in order to particpate and receive the paper:
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/.../tJIqdOypqT0rGdzrHYQW39nc...
https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/.../tJIqdOypqT0rGdzrHYQW39nc...
13 August 2022 marked the 21st anniversary of the ceasefire agreement that ended the armed hostilities in Republic of Macedonia, now Republic of North Macedonia. The armed conflict started on 22 January 2001 with guerrilla attacks on the police station in Tearce, near Tetovo, and a passenger train. The self-ascribed National Liberation Army, a group with a same Albanian acronym as the Kosovar Liberation Army, immediately claimed responsibility for the two assaults. The months of clashes between the state forces and the ethnic Albanian rebels resulted in more than 200 casualties and more than 170,000 internally displaced persons.
Various memory activities related to the 2001 conflict in Macedonia appeared in the immediate aftermath of the conflict and they were predominantly performed within the assumed domains of the two largest ethnic groups in the state: the ethnic Macedonians and the ethnic Albanians. However, the post-2001 developments demonstrate that the memory discourses, narratives, and practices are not as uniform as those of the early 2000s. There are critical changes of the memory actors and activities over the last two decades which hint at the shifting power dynamics related to the memory of the conflict and the agreement.
Various memory activities related to the 2001 conflict in Macedonia appeared in the immediate aftermath of the conflict and they were predominantly performed within the assumed domains of the two largest ethnic groups in the state: the ethnic Macedonians and the ethnic Albanians. However, the post-2001 developments demonstrate that the memory discourses, narratives, and practices are not as uniform as those of the early 2000s. There are critical changes of the memory actors and activities over the last two decades which hint at the shifting power dynamics related to the memory of the conflict and the agreement.
The seminar is based on the longer paper that discusses the modes of commemorating and memorializing the 2001 Macedonian conflict in North Macedonia since its formal end in August 2001, authored by Naum Trajanovski in 2022 and prepared for the Humanitarian Law Center’s Memory Activism Programme. The paper argues that both the major trajectories of commemorating and memorializing 2001, as well as the critical changes occurring during the last two decades, were predominantly elite-driven and, in several cases, reposing on vernacular understandings of 2001.
Author’s bio:
Naum Trajanovski, a PhD graduate from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, is an assistant at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw. In the past years, he was cooperating with the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje and the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. His major academic interests include memory politics, nationalism studies and sociological knowledge-transfers in East Central and South East Europe. He is the author of a book in Macedonian on the Museum of the Macedonian struggle and the Macedonian memory politics (Templum, 2020).
Naum Trajanovski, a PhD graduate from the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, is an assistant at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Warsaw. In the past years, he was cooperating with the Faculty of Philosophy in Skopje and the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. His major academic interests include memory politics, nationalism studies and sociological knowledge-transfers in East Central and South East Europe. He is the author of a book in Macedonian on the Museum of the Macedonian struggle and the Macedonian memory politics (Templum, 2020).
Introduction:
Jelena Ɖureinović is a postdoctoral researcher and scientific coordinator of the Research Platform “Transformations and Eastern Europe” at the University of Vienna. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Giessen. Her current research project combines the approaches of global history and memory studies and explores the role of memory in the context of networks of solidarity in the global Cold War and decolonisation, focusing on the internationalism of Yugoslav war veterans. She is also interested in the memory work of the far-right and specificities of memory politics in contemporary authoritarian democracies. Her book The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia: Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution (Routledge, 2020) centres on the question of how memory politics works, investigating the radical revision of the Second World War in post-Yugoslav Serbia. She developed the Memory Activism Programme at the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, where she is still involved in providing strategic direction.
Jelena Ɖureinović is a postdoctoral researcher and scientific coordinator of the Research Platform “Transformations and Eastern Europe” at the University of Vienna. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Giessen. Her current research project combines the approaches of global history and memory studies and explores the role of memory in the context of networks of solidarity in the global Cold War and decolonisation, focusing on the internationalism of Yugoslav war veterans. She is also interested in the memory work of the far-right and specificities of memory politics in contemporary authoritarian democracies. Her book The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia: Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution (Routledge, 2020) centres on the question of how memory politics works, investigating the radical revision of the Second World War in post-Yugoslav Serbia. She developed the Memory Activism Programme at the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, where she is still involved in providing strategic direction.
Commentator:
Emina Zoletić
I am a doctoral student (finishing my second year) at the Doctoral School of Social Science, University of Warsaw, program in English language, with a doctoral project: "Intergenerational transmission of the memory of the war: The Cases of Families in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Bosnian diaspora in Europe." The doctoral research project deals with the intergenerational transmission of memory, with a focus on the first generation of Bosnians who experienced the 1992–1995 war and their children, born after the war in Sarajevo and currently living in the EU countries and US. I work under the joint supervision of Joanna Wawrzyniak (the University of Warsaw, Institute of Sociology) and Chris Hewer (Kingston University, UK, psychology).
In my research, I leverage my background in psychology (a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sarajevo), two master’s degrees in health sciences at Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, and the University Paris Descartes, and specialization in clinical psychology in Zagreb, as well as ten years of clinical experience at the university hospital as a clinical psychologist.
Last year, I was awarded a Polish national research centre NCN Preludium grant for the PhD project, a 3-year grant. My doctoral research has been funded by the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, Hamburg, within the Ph.D. scholarship program "Beyond Borders" for one year (2022–2023) to conduct part of my research on the Bosnian diaspora in Germany. I was awarded a CEFRES mobility grant in Prague, 2022–2023, and I will be doing a PhD fellowship at the CEFRES centre starting in the fall of 2022.
Emina Zoletić
I am a doctoral student (finishing my second year) at the Doctoral School of Social Science, University of Warsaw, program in English language, with a doctoral project: "Intergenerational transmission of the memory of the war: The Cases of Families in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Bosnian diaspora in Europe." The doctoral research project deals with the intergenerational transmission of memory, with a focus on the first generation of Bosnians who experienced the 1992–1995 war and their children, born after the war in Sarajevo and currently living in the EU countries and US. I work under the joint supervision of Joanna Wawrzyniak (the University of Warsaw, Institute of Sociology) and Chris Hewer (Kingston University, UK, psychology).
In my research, I leverage my background in psychology (a bachelor’s degree from the University of Sarajevo), two master’s degrees in health sciences at Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, and the University Paris Descartes, and specialization in clinical psychology in Zagreb, as well as ten years of clinical experience at the university hospital as a clinical psychologist.
Last year, I was awarded a Polish national research centre NCN Preludium grant for the PhD project, a 3-year grant. My doctoral research has been funded by the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, Hamburg, within the Ph.D. scholarship program "Beyond Borders" for one year (2022–2023) to conduct part of my research on the Bosnian diaspora in Germany. I was awarded a CEFRES mobility grant in Prague, 2022–2023, and I will be doing a PhD fellowship at the CEFRES centre starting in the fall of 2022.
