Papers by Rodoljub Jovanovic
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict , 2025
This entry provides an overview of memorial museums in Sarajevo displaying exhibitions about the ... more This entry provides an overview of memorial museums in Sarajevo displaying exhibitions about the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). It places the museums in Sarajevo within a wider discussion about a recent trend in memorialization of past violence that resulted in the proliferation of memorial museums. The entry then employs the theoretical framework of narrative (de)normalization of violence to assess how memorial museums in the capital of BiH represent the violent past of the country. The entry also discusses whether these representations of violence allow visitors to Sarajevan museums to critically engage with and reflect on the country’s violent past. It is argued that while the Sarajevan memorial museums are mostly successful in developing, in their visitors, empathy with victims of violence, and thus fulfill their role as memorials, they also fall short in fulfilling their museum role and in informing visitors about the historical context in which the violence occurred. This, in turn, might be hindering the possibility of the visitors to critically engage with the violence on display.
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2020
ABSTRACT In the context of legacies of mass violence and political oppression during the recent p... more ABSTRACT In the context of legacies of mass violence and political oppression during the recent past in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia), history teaching is seen as an important factor in building sustainable peace and democracy. Caught between various national and international policy actors, history teaching has been subject to frequently overlapping and inconsistent reforms. Despite prolific research on history education in the Western Balkans teachers’ experiences of history education and its transformation have largely remained unexamined. This paper explores history teachers’ perceptions of and approaches to the topics they find difficult to teach. The paper draws on data gathered through an online survey that yielded 793 responses from history teachers and 14 regional history education expert interviews. The results show which topics teachers consider difficult to teach in six Western Balkan countries, and how certain individual characteristics (e.g. religiousness and level of education) and school characteristics (e.g. urban or rural and a monocultural or multicultural environment) link to the roles teachers assume when teaching controversial topics.
Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, 2021
Twenty years after the end of the violent break‐up of Yugoslavia, new generations of young people... more Twenty years after the end of the violent break‐up of Yugoslavia, new generations of young people in Serbia are living with its legacies. Despite the socio‐psychological implications of violent conflict in post‐conflict societies being well established in the literature, there are still only a few studies which focus on young Serbians’ meaning‐making in relation to the recent wars. The present study focuses on how a group of young Serbians, born after the violence was over, understands the violent break‐up of Yugoslavia. The article presents the analysis of interviews and group discussions with 31 first‐year university students in Serbia about these events. The goal of the analysis is to determine a) whether participants’ narratives contain identifiable themes of a collective memory of conflict and b) whether participants normalize past violence through narrative. The relationship between the two as well as the relationship between history textbooks and participants’ narratives will be discussed. Finally, the findings are discussed in regard to how participants’ understandings of past violence might shape their political positioning in relation to nationalism.
The state authorities in Serbia have formally committed to raising awareness about the 1990s wars... more The state authorities in Serbia have formally committed to raising awareness about the 1990s wars in former Yugoslavia, the war crimes committed during them, and the necessity for their prosecution. The National Strategy for the Prosecution of War Crimes, which the Government of the Republic of Serbia adopted in 2016, sets raising awareness and outreach in society as one of its goals. Within the outreach section, the National Strategy addresses formal education, but very briefly, and without binding regulations for educational authorities. The ongoing problem is that, in practice, formal education does not dedicate a lot of attention to the wars that followed the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Although education is mentioned, the National Strategy has not initiated any changes in the way the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s are taught. This policy paper focuses on the formal education processes, by identifying numerous issues concerning how the wars that followed the dissolution of Yugoslavia are situated in the context of formal education at the primary and secondary school levels in Serbia. The issues pertaining to the problematic or insufficient teaching of the 1990s wars arise in multiple spheres: formulation of the curricula, textbook content, training and education of teachers and teaching practice. The educational authorities do not take international recommendations into account, while most of the work done to improve the situation in these spheres comes from various international and local non-state initiatives. The paper offers recommendations aimed at the state institutions and educational authorities in Serbia.
Intercultural Education: Critical Perspectives, Pedagogical Challenges, and Promising Practices, 2020
Regulations in the area of education in Serbia, as an EU candidate country, are projected to swif... more Regulations in the area of education in Serbia, as an EU candidate country, are projected to swiftly align with the ideology of interculturalism as prescribed by the international organizations (i.e., UNESCO and Council of Europe). For Serbian society, as for other societies burdened with recent violence, history education is one of the key societal practices that can help alleviate the challenges resulting from violent conflicts. In order to create transformations that will guide history education aimed at improving intergroup relations, certain questions need to be addressed. What are the challenges faced by intercultural education framework in post-conflict societies? Consequently, what are the limitations of the intercultural education framework in general? Discourse analysis presented in this chapter is aimed at examining the extent to which high-school history textbook narratives normalize or interrogate violence (Bermúdez, 2016) and sustain or challenge societal beliefs of an ethos of conflict (Bar-Tal, 2013). Conclusions point to the need for intercultural education framework to engage with all of the specificities of post-conflict societies in order to be a useful guideline for the furtherance of history education.
Many studies have looked into history curricula and history textbooks in the Western Balkans regi... more Many studies have looked into history curricula and history textbooks in the Western Balkans region, but what actually happens in the classroom is mostly left unexamined. For example, it is unknown how teachers approach curricular expectations dictated by the state bodies; in which ways they use, and would like to change, the teaching materials prescribed by the educational authorities; how different elements of their societal context determine the ways they deal with difficult topics in their classroom; whether the history teaching paradigm has shifted from lecture-dominant to learner-oriented and how pedagogy has shifted from one narrative transmission
to narrative analysis. Furthermore, given the fact that in the Western Balkan region there have been many international interventions in the field of history teaching, what has been the effect? To try to outline the answers to these questions, together with history teaching experts and practitioners from the region, we developed a large-scale mixed-method study looking into needs of history teachers.
Books by Rodoljub Jovanovic
Stavovi mladih u Srbiji o ratovima devedesetih - Istraživački izveštaj, 2023
Približno 25 godina nakon završetka ratova koji su obeležili raspad Jugoslavije, generacije rođen... more Približno 25 godina nakon završetka ratova koji su obeležili raspad Jugoslavije, generacije rođene nakon potpisivanja mirovnih sporazuma odrastaju u Srbiji koja se, kao post–konfliktno društvo, na različite načine i da– lje suočava sa svojom ratnom prošlošću. Mladi ljudi ko– ji će steći pravo glasa na narednim izborima rođeni su 2005. godine. Otvorena su pitanja šta (n)ovi mladi znaju o ratovima i ratnim zločinima počinjenim tokom njih, kako ih razumeju ali i na koji način razumeju društvene prakse sećanja na ratove i ratne zločine. Upravo su ovo neka od centralnih pitanja koja su motivisala Inicijativu mladih za ljudska prava da sprovede ovo istraživanje.
Confronting Multiple Crises: Local and International Perspectives on Policy-Making in Kosovo, 2022
In the last couple of decades, peacebuilding literature shifted the focus to reconciliation. Goin... more In the last couple of decades, peacebuilding literature shifted the focus to reconciliation. Going beyond conflict resolution, which can lead to cold peace, reconciliation is understood as involving sociopsychological processes. Many authors consider reconciling different versions of the past, often existing in past opponent groups, as one of the keys to successfully reaching peace. Because of this, history education, as a place where young generations are presented with the official version of the past, is deemed invaluable for peacebuilding processes in societies with a recent history of violence. However, this does not come without certain challenges. Research on history education in post-conflict societies most often deals with educational media such as textbooks, while exploring how teachers approach these topics is rare. This chapter focuses on the experiences of history teachers working within education in Albanian language in Kosovo in relation to teaching about Kosovo War. Findings show that throughout initial teacher training (ITT) and state organized in-service trainings, history teachers working within education in Albanian language in Kosovo do not get many opportunities to obtain specific skills needed for dealing with difficult topics such as the Kosovo War. Trainings that do provide these skills are organized by non-state actors, sporadic, and include a small number of teachers. In addition, the concepts and teaching methods provided within these seems sometimes to be misinterpreted and erroneously applied in the classroom. More often than not teachers use their personal experiences to complement the lessons about Kosovo War and this practice seems to be leading to a great variety in the type of story students will be presented depending on teachers’ age and personal beliefs. Taken together, the findings show that history education, in its current form, can hardly fulfill the goals set in various educational documents.
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Papers by Rodoljub Jovanovic
to narrative analysis. Furthermore, given the fact that in the Western Balkan region there have been many international interventions in the field of history teaching, what has been the effect? To try to outline the answers to these questions, together with history teaching experts and practitioners from the region, we developed a large-scale mixed-method study looking into needs of history teachers.
Books by Rodoljub Jovanovic
to narrative analysis. Furthermore, given the fact that in the Western Balkan region there have been many international interventions in the field of history teaching, what has been the effect? To try to outline the answers to these questions, together with history teaching experts and practitioners from the region, we developed a large-scale mixed-method study looking into needs of history teachers.