WHAT WE DO
Project timeline
Over three years, the Consortium met several times, both face-to-face and online via video conferencing, to monitor the project’s performance and progress. The Transnational Project Meetings (TPM) and the Intensive Learning/Teaching/Training activities (LTT) took place at different locations, and each gathering had a specific goal.
The host universities were also responsible for organizing talks and round tables as an occasion to share research outcomes and practices of work from a transdisciplinary perspective.
Each meeting has been an opportunity for mutual growth and intellectual exchange.
November 2020
North Macedonia (on line due to Covid 19 restrictions)
First Private University FON
Transnational Project Meeting 1 – Kick-Off
The Steering Group and the delegates met online to discuss and schedule the future steps of the project, and arrange the working groups for the development of the Intellectual Outputs.
12-15 July 2021
Athens, Greece
Panteion University
Trans-national Project Meeting 2 & Intensive LTT Program
The Steering Group and the delegates met for the first time in person in Athens. Here they mainly discussed the structure, the literature and the methodology of the Transdisciplinary MA in Balkan Studies.
28–31 October 2021
Belgrade, Serbia
Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK) Singidunum University
Trans-national Project Meeting 3 & Intensive LTT Program
For their third meeting, the delegates met in Belgrade.
Here, they kept working on finalizing the structure of the MA program by designing courses within the four research clusters Bodies Politics, Memory Studies, Critique of Illiberal Ideologies, Politics of Migration, Borders and Communities.
30 March – 2 April 2022
Naples, Italy
Department of Human and Social Sciences (DISUS)
University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’
Trans-national Project Meeting 4 & Intensive LTT Program
This time the members met in Naples. They shared the MA syllabi each working group elaborated, and discussed the possible criticalities the consortium has to face.
“Learning from the Balkans” is the title of an insightful dialogue that took place between Prof. Iain Chambers and Prof. Ljubomir Frckoski.
8-11 June 2022
Verona, Italy
Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona Polo
Intensive Program for LTT (C5)
In Verona the PhD program expert Alessio Lorenzi (Univr) gave a presentation on the practicalities of Doctoral Networks. In the session “From Verona to the Balkans and return” the delegates met two cultural NgOs active in Verona – One Bridge to Idomeni and Interzona – whose work involves the Balkan.
September 2022
Skopje
Video and conference
Pre-Dissemination event
“Thinking with the Balkans”
National Gallery. НационалнаГалерија. Galeria Nacionale Daut Pasha Hammam – Skopje
Dialogue between Iain Chambers and Boaventura de Sousa Santos,
Round of interventions by Elizabeta Seleva, Slavco Dimitrov, Stamatia Portanova and Ivana Dragsic.
Thinking with the Balkans | Iain Chambers
Read the abstract ↓
I intend to talk of the political and philosophical state of Europe through linking the present ‘crisis’ of migration to the hysterical outburst of accusations of antisemitism at Documenta 15 in Kassel this summer. I will suggest that the historical failures exposed in both cases pose a deep interrogation of the concepts of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’ and ‘rights’. These failures continue both to frame existing critical and cultural lexicons while underwriting the European matrix of the modern Balkans.
Close the abstract ↑
Building cognitive justice: epistemologies of the south, intercultural translation and ecologies of knowledge | Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Read the abstract ↓
Given its monopoly of rigorous knowledge Modern Western epistemologies have contributed to destroy any other ways of knowing that didn’t fit the European interests. Hence, the epistemicide. The way these epistemologies were linked to the rise and consolidation of capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy (the three main forms of modern domination) led to a close link between global social injustice and global cognitive justice. The universities were the main site where this link was simultaneously produced and made invisible. The epistemologies of the south are an attempt to generate cognitive justice as a precondition for social justice. I will briefly characterize its main concepts and procedures, such as the abyssal line, the sociology of absences, the sociology of emergencies, intercultural translation, and ecologies of knowledge.
Close the abstract ↑
28–30 October 2022
Belgrade, Serbia
Faculty of Media and Communications (FMK) at Singidunum University
Intensive LTT Program
The members of Geobalkans proceeded with work on finalizing the PhD program (IO1), going through the Model and Guide for implementation (IO4), established the skeleton (tabs development) for the web platform (IO3), enriched the document with open resources links and made plan for producing further materials for uploading (IO2).
3rd March 2023
Athens – Greece
Panteion University
Trans-national Project Meeting 5
For the last trans-national project meeting the Geobalkans’ coordinators and members of the consortium met in Athens. They wrapped up the activities within the four intellectual outputs (Program and Methodology, Learning Materials, Web Platform, Model and Guide for Implementation), and discussed the future of the consortium, guided by the idea to find ways to launch the integrated MA and PhD study program in critical, inter-disciplinary Balkans Studies.
Skopje
Final Conference
Balkans. Borders. Bodies
Talks, Screenings and Round Tables
TBA
