Abstracts der Vorträge

Aleksa Milanović:The Movement Whose Time Has Come:Trans activism in the Post-Yugoslav Space (18.03.2025)

Vortrag in englischer Sprache

Abstract

The topic of this lecture is the emergence and development of trans activism in the post-Yugoslav space as well as rising and strengthening of social and institutional transphobia. Due to the common history as well as cultural and linguistic similarities, the trans community in this region is connected and often cooperate in activist actions. This region shares many past and current experiences such as political turmoil, rise of authoritarianism accompanied by public unrest, and post-war conflict. Further, all post-Yugoslav countries are marked with high gender-based oppression, discrimination, violence, and segregation on multiple levels. Gender-phobia is deeply rooted within the stereotypical gender-binary system affected by dominant conservative attitudes and practices. In the past few years anti-trans rhetoric is gaining momentum in activist, political, academic, and public media circles throughout the region, leading to rapid regression of the rights of women and TIGV persons and negative public opinions about TIGV people. Consequently, there is an increase in homophobic and transphobic hate speech and violence. Right-wing and anti-gender actors catalyze fear, blaming socio-economic problems on gender and working to gain/increase political power, entrench authoritarian regimes, and uproot democratic progress. Anti-gender rhetoric in the mainstream media is widespread and amplified through social media. In order to find the most effective solutions to all of this problems trans activist from post-Yugoslav space and their allies join forces through various activist projects and share knowledge, skills and strategies to fight transphobia and anti-gender narratives.

About the speaker 
Aleksa Milanović is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade and the author of Representation of Transgender Identities in Visual Arts (2015) and Media Construction of Other Body (2019). He holds a PhD in Transdisciplinary Studies of Contemporary Arts and Media from the Singidunum University in Belgrade and a MA degree in Theory of Arts and Media from the University of Arts in Belgrade. He is engaged in scientific research work in which he mainly deals with body studies and gender studies in the field of transgender and queer studies, theorising the discourse of different, non-normative genders by analysing representations of transgender and other gender bodies within mass media, visual arts and popular culture. He has been involved in trans activism since 2008, when he volunteered for numerous activist organisations and informal activist groups working to promote LGBTI rights. He participated in the founding of Trans Network Balkan in 2014, as well as Kolektiv Talas TIRV (Collective Wave TIGV) in 2020. He is currently a Programme director in the Trans Network Balkan.

Martin Gramc: Visibilising Intersex Persons in Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia (08.04.2025)

Vortrag in englischer Sprache

Abstract
The Chicago consensus statement introduced new guidelines for the treatment of people with variations of sex characteristics (VSC) and support for their families. The statement and its update advocated for new conceptual framework that proposed multidisciplinary teams (MDT), providing health care for people with VSC, accommodation of parental concerns, peer support, patient centered care, open communication, shared decision making and gender assignment. There is a lack on data on the implementation of patient oriented multidisciplinary approaches of teams caring for children with VSC and shared decision making between care providers, parents and possibly peer support groups. What is more, current practice and reseach focuses on North Americal and Western Europe,whereas little is known about the treatment in post-Socialist/Communist European contexts. The lecture will address the lack of research in post-Socialist-Yugoslav space by drawing on focus groups I conducted with health care professionals and peer support groups in care teams in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. In the lecture I will present and analyze the opinions of care providers and peer support groups involved in collaboration in health care provided to children with VSC and their families. Furthermore, I will present the viewpoints of team members in the care for people with VSC on growing capabilities of a child with VSC, parental wishes and concerns, open communication, and peer support. The results showed a predominantly multidisciplinary approach of the teams, a lack of psychosocial providers, poor collaboration with peer support groups and poor implementation of shared decision-making to address clinical uncertainty with parents and people with VSC. At the end of the lecture I will discuss the results of the study and the issues in treatment of people with VSC, medical and legal discourses, intersex movement and human rights perspective.

About the speaker 
Martin Gramc is a researcher in the field of bioethics, gender and sexual minority studies from Slovenia. As a researcher, Martin has been collaborating with the Peace Institute in Ljubljana, working on projects centered around migrant issues, LGBTIQ+ minorities, and bioethics. Martin has just finished Marie Skłodowska Curie fellowship at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The PhD project examined the collaboration in health care teams providing care for children with variations of sex characteristics and their parents.

Danijela Majstorović: Peripheral Intersections: Rethinking Gender, Race, and Coloniality in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (06.05.2025)

Vortrag in englischer Sprache

Abstract
The objective of this lecture is to see how feminist empiricist methodologies and theorizing from the periphery can ‘situate knowledge’, to borrow from Haraway, and open new ways of understanding intersectionality in thinking over the notions of gender, race and coloniality in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina and, by extension, the former Yugoslav region. The lecture is based on three parts, or vignettes, stemming from my earlier feminist empirical work (see Majstorović and Mandić, 2011, “What It Means to be a Bosnian woman”) and documentary filmmaking (Dream Job, 2005), my more recent work on two types of migrant figures distinguished and made mobile based on race and labor power, the MENA migrants currently stuck in Bosnian reception centers, and Bosnians and Herzegovinians leaving for Germany and Austria in search of work opportunities and future for their children (Majstorović 2022), and thirdly, an attempt to write decolonial theory and non-Western feminist thought and politics from the specific politics of location (Rich 1994) and poetics of relation (Glissant 1997) of postwar Bosnia (Majstorović 2021). It introduces students to the concept of situated intersectionality as a study of situated and entangled inequalities, feminist responses to social justice, forms and philosophies of activism, and peripheral knowledge production over topics of race, colonialism, coloniality and peripherality.

About the speaker
Danijela Majstorović is a Professor of English Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University of Banja Luka’s English department. Her research interests involve critical discourse analysis, critical theory, feminist theory, post- and decolonial theory, and post-Dayton Bosnia. Her most recent book Discourse and Affect in Post-socialist Bosnia and Heregovina: Peripheral Selves came out in 2021. 

YugoslaWomen+ Collective: The Post-Yugoslav Space in IR and Collective (Un)learning (27.05.2025)

Vortrag in englischer Sprache

The Post-Yugoslav Space in IR and Collective (Un)learning
This collective discussion brings together six women scholars of and from the post-Yugoslav space, who, using personal experiences, analyze the dynamics of knowledge production in international relations (IR), especially regarding the post-Yugoslav space. Working in Global North academia but with lived experiences in the region we study, our research is often subjected to a particular gaze, seeped in assumptions about “ulterior” motives and expectations about writing and representation. Can those expected to be objects of knowledge ever become epistemic subjects? We argue that the rendering of the post-Yugoslav space as conflict-prone and as Europe's liminal semi-periphery in the discipline of IR cannot be decoupled from the rendering of the region and those seen as related to it as unable to produce knowledge that, in mainstream discussions, is seen as valuable and “objective.” The post-Yugoslav region and those seen as related to it being simultaneously postcolonial, postsocialist, and postwar, and characterized by marginalization, complicity, and privilege in global racialized hierarchies at the same time, can make visible specific forms of multiple colonialities, potentially creating space for anti- and/or decolonial alternatives. We further make the case for embracing a radical reflexivity that is active, collaborative, and rooted in feminist epistemologies and political commitments. 

About the speakers
The Yugoslawomen+ Collective is a group of six scholars (Dženeta Karabegović, Slađana Lazić, Vjosa Musliu, Julija Sardelić, Jelena Obradović Wochnik, Elena B. Stavrevska) of and from the post-Yugoslav space, currently working in Global North academia. The Collective has been brought together through frustration with the pattern in the struggles over knowledge production we have all experienced and the love for knowledge, education, and the region we have called ‘home’.

Roundtable: Maja Pan and Clara Lhullier: Thinking, Writing, Living Lesbian Activist Struggles (10.06.2025)

Vortrag in englischer Sprache

Abstract
In this session, two lesbian academics and activists will discuss - in the form of a roundtable - the challenges of lesbian feminist politics in the post-Yugoslav space and beyond. 

About the speakers 
Maja Pan is a doctor of philosophy and feminist theorist. She works as an independent researcher, informal educator and cultural worker. Her research and academic work is distinctly interdisciplinary, dealing with gender philosophy, post-structuralist philosophy, and ranges from lesbian feminist history in the post-Yugoslav space to critical animal studies. A long-time feminist activist and theorist of activism, Pan has worked with several grassroots organisations in Central and South-East Europe on projects advocating LGBTIQ+ and women's rights. She lives in Slovenia. Her recent publications include: Lesbian activism in Slovenia’s Eighties (2023, Časopis za kritiko znanosti – in Slovene); In-Betweenness: Lesbianity in Socialist Slovenia  (2024, Journal of Lesbian Studies); Towards Trans Feminist Coalitions in the Post-Yugoslav Space: Building Feminist Radical Solidarities (2022, European Journal of Women's Studies) and Yearning for Space, Pleasure, and Knowledge: Autonomous Lesbian and Queer Feminist Organising in Ljubljana (2019, with Tea Oblak).

Clara Lhullier is a feminist researcher and activist from Brazil. At the University of Bologna, she has recently completed her MA thesis about lesbian politicians in Serbia and Brazil.