Ana Ljubojevic

junior fellow

EURIAS cohort 2018/2019

Polish Institute of Advanced Studies (PIASt)

discipline Cultural Studies

Postdoctoral fellow, University of Zagreb

Research project

'Walk this Way, Talk this Way': Modalities of Cultural Trauma Linked to Post-war Commemoration Practices

This project's aim is to analyse cultural trauma related to the sites of memory of war. It approaches cultural trauma from the perspective of spatial mobility engagement and perceptions of people visiting war monuments and commemorative events. Even though trauma claiming is, by definition, a process that generates production of memory, I aspire to overcome nationally oriented memory studies focusing on politics of identities. I follow Brubaker's approach in opposing "taken for granted 'groupist' constructivist paradigm"

In order to analyse cultural trauma related to the sites of memory of war, this project addresses the following specific objectives:

(i) Demonstrate under which circumstances a place becomes subject of cultural trauma and collective memory - by analysing the dynamics of memories and symbols linked to the notions of cultural heritage, monuments and aesthetic values of selected memorial sites

(ii) Study social production of memory - the emotional investment of the visit to memory site, appropriation of the official commemorative practices, and translation of such practices into action

(iii) Investigate the basis of the transcultural sphere of European memory - map common elements present in selected case studies.

Biography

Ana Ljubojevic is NEWFELPRO postdoctoral fellow - Marie Curie COFUND project "Lost in transition: (mis)use of transitional justice mechanisms in post-conflict countries" at Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Citizenship and Migration (CEDIM), Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb. She holds a PhD in Political Systems and Institutional Change from the IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca.

Her research area is transitional justice in Western Balkan countries, with a special interest in historical narratives about the war; non-judicial mechanisms of transitional justice in Croatia and Serbia and has research interests in memory studies, cultural trauma and social production of memory.

Selected publications

‘Remembering The Hague: Impact of international criminal justice on memory practices in Croatia’, in V. Pavlakovic & D. Paukovic (eds), Framing the Nation and Collective Identities Political Rituals and Cultural Memory of the Twentieth Century Traumas in Croatia, Routlegde, 2019, pp. 165-179.

‘Between acknowledgment and denial: the Serbian narrative of the war and shifts in media frames’, in K. Bachmann & I. Ristic, International criminal tribunals as actors of domestic change: The impact on media coverage, Peter Lang International, Frankfurt am Main, 2019, pp. 229-305.

'Frames of Acceptance of International Criminal Justice in Serbia', in S. Buckley-Zistel, F. Mieth & M. Papa (eds), After Nuremberg. Exploring Multiple Dimensions of the Acceptance of International Criminal Justice, International Nuremberg Principles Academy, Nuremberg, 2017.

‘Cultural trauma set in stone? The case of shelling of Dubrovnik’, with M. Jerman & K. Bovan, Politicka misao, Croatian Political Science Review, vol. 53, no. 5, 2017, pp. 197-219.

'Speak up, write out: Language and populism in Croatia', Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, vol. 40, 2016, pp. pp. 29-55.