Institute for Advanced Studies - INS

📢 Last week, members of the INS project team — Anton Markoč, Teodora Stanković, Feđa Pavlović, Nikola Zečević, and Vuk Uskoković — had a productive study visit to the European University Institute in Florence.

During the visit, our team met with Jelena Džankić, Programme Director for the Widening Europe Programme and the CIVICA Alliance at the EUI; Giancarlo Casale, Head of the Department of History; Joanna Zofia Wielgo, Project Manager at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies; Andrea Gaiba, Programme Manager at the Transnational Democracy Programme at the Florence School of Transnational Governance; as well as researchers Teona Nešović Birkner and Nemanja Kidžin.

The visit provided an excellent opportunity to discuss possibilities for future cooperation, exchange ideas on ongoing research, and explore potential forms of institutional collaboration. We are grateful to our colleagues at the EUI for their warm welcome, generous exchange, and inspiring conversations.

The visit was organised as part of the project “Beyond Ethnification: Post-Nationalistic Perspectives of Montenegrin Identity”, supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Innovation of Montenegro. ✨🇲🇪📚

📣 It is our honour to share that our colleague, Andrej Mihailović, has been awarded the title of Visiting Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London.

This recognition reflects Andrej’s long-standing work and engagement with King’s College London over almost three decades, particularly within the Department of Engineering and its Centre for Telecommunications.

The visiting appointment also testifies to the high regard in which Andrej’s links with engineering at King’s are held, while opening up valuable opportunities for future collaboration between King’s College London and the University of Montenegro.

📢 We are pleased to share that our Research Associate Feđa Pavlović has published a paper in the HEPP Working Paper Series, Vol. 5, issued by the Helsinki Hub on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation at the University of Helsinki.

In his paper, “The Good Underdog: On Populism’s Construction of ‘the People’”, Pavlović addresses one of the central questions in contemporary populism studies: how do populists envisage “the people”? Are they depicted primarily as a morally pure and homogeneous entity, or as the underdog in a struggle against entrenched power?

Critically engaging with these two prominent approaches, the paper proposes a third, synthesising perspective: the “good underdog thesis.” According to this thesis, populist discourses tend to construct “the people” through two distinct but interrelated criteria: normative valuation and power.

The paper is available here:
http://hdl.handle.net/10138/631665

📣 Last week, we had the special pleasure of hosting professors from the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences (FLAS), the only English-speaking liberal arts university in Montenegro.

The meeting was an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and discuss possibilities for future cooperation, academic networking, and joint initiatives.

We are looking forward to developing new opportunities for collaboration in the period ahead.

📣 Last week, our INStitute hosted the workshop “Behind the Curtain: Alternative Epistemologies and Conspiracist Ideologies in Central and Eastern Europe” at its premises in Podgorica.

The workshop brought together researchers working on conspiracism, conspiracy theories, alternative epistemologies, media, politics, and public discourse across Central and Eastern Europe. Through intensive discussion of draft chapters for a planned edited volume, participants explored how conspiracist narratives circulate, gain political relevance, and shape contemporary social and political dynamics in the region.

The workshop was organised as part of the research project “Radical Distrust and Identity Formation: Investigating Popular Pseudoscience and Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Yugoslav Digital Public Sphere (PseudoCon)”, funded by Montenegro's Ministry of Education, Science and Innovation.

📣 It is our honor to share that our Research Associate Janko Paunović has published his book, 'Die Mitgift im Statut von Kotor' ('The Dowry in the Statute of Kotor'), with Springer.

The book is based on Janko’s doctoral thesis, defended at the University of Vienna, and examines the institution of dowry (dos, perchivium/parchivium/prćija) in the fourteenth-century Statute of Kotor (Cattaro). By situating Kotor’s legal tradition within the broader context of Dalmatian urban statutes, the study explores the reception, adaptation, and local transformation of Roman legal concepts in medieval Southeastern Europe. Special attention is given to the role of notarial practice, Venetian legal influences, and the interaction between written law, communal customs, and legal formulae in late medieval Kotor.

More information is available here:
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-51655-0

We are happy to share that our Research Associate Nikola Zečević participated in the 13th IOS Annual Conference, “From Contested Pasts to (In)Secure Futures – Politics in East and Southeast Europe,” organised by the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS Regensburg) and held in Regensburg from 22 to 24 April 2026.

At the conference, he presented his paper titled “Weaponising the Past: Coats of Arms, Flags, and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Montenegro.”

His presentation examined how heraldic symbols, flags, and historical references are mobilised in contemporary Montenegro as instruments of political belonging, identity-making, and symbolic contestation.

📣 We are very pleased to share that our Research Associate Ivan Tepavčević, as the lead author, has published a new co-authored article in the Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, a Q1-ranked international journal in the field of Area Studies.

In the article, Tepavčević et al. examine the development of education and pedagogical thought in Montenegro during the final decades of the nineteenth century. Drawing on archival material and relevant historical literature, the study places educational change within the broader social, political, demographic, and economic context of the period, highlighting its importance in Montenegro’s wider modernization.

This publication represents a valuable contribution to the study of modern Montenegro and the history of education.

More information is available here:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19448953.2026.2633652

📢 Our Research Fellow Anton Markoč delivered last week an online keynote address at the American University of Central Asia’s 4th Annual First-Year and Second-Year Seminar (FYS/SYS) Conference, where he taught for many years.

His lecture, “What Is Wisdom?”, examined three enduring conceptions of wisdom within Western epistemology: wisdom as the possession of extensive knowledge, as intellectual humility, and as a way of life. The talk encouraged students to think both critically and historically about the ideal of wisdom and to distinguish it from related epistemological concepts, such as knowledge and understanding.

📣This week, our INStitute had the pleasure of hosting distinguished researcher Jelena Džankić from the European University Institute (EUI), who delivered a lecture titled “The Black Swans” of Citizenship: Citizenship-by-Investment Programs Around the World. In her talk, she examined the global rise of citizenship-by-investment programmes and the broader political, legal, and structural inequalities that shape this phenomenon.

We thank Jelena Džankić for an insightful and engaging lecture, and for sharing her research with our audience.