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Stefano Bianchini is an independent scholar. He was Professor of East European Politics and History at the University of Bologna until October 2023 when he retired. From 2015 to 2021 he served as Rector’s delegate for relations with Eastern Europe. Previously, he coordinated the two-years Interdisciplinary MA in East European Studies (MIREES), a joint diploma of the Universities of Bologna, St. Petersburg, Vytautas Magnus at Kaunas, and Corvinus of Budapest. He is visiting professor of the State University of St. Petersburg and holds a H.D. in Humanities of the Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas. From 2001 to 2018 he was also the co-director of the European Regional Master in Democracy and Human Rights for SEE (ERMA) awarding a double diploma of the Universities of Sarajevo and Bologna. He is a member of the Advisory Boad and former Vice president of the Association for Studies of Nationalities (ASN) based at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York and Executive Editor of the blind peer-review journal “Southeastern Europe”, (Brill, Leiden) and other academic journals.

As an expert of Balkan issues, he was an adviser of the ICTY, in the Hague. He published and co-edited 39 books and more than 200 articles in different languages. He is the author, among others, of Liquid Nationalism and State Partitions in Europe, Edward Elgar, London-New York, 2017; Eastern Europe and the Challenges of Modernity 1800-2000, Routledge, Abingdon-New York, 2015; La Question Yougoslave (Castermann, 1996) and co-editor of Rekindling the Strong State in Russia and China, together with Antonio Fiori (Brill, Leiden, 2020).

Mirza Buljubašić is a criminologist with PhD, MA, and BA in Criminology, along with degrees in Criminal Law and Security Studies, all with honors. He is a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement. His career spans roles as a research consultant, research supervisor, and researcher, focusing on political violence, encompassing atrocity crimes, terrorism, and extremism, as well as issues of punishment, transitional justice and intergenerationality.

Venera Cocaj is a PhD Candidate at the European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. Her PhD research is part of a larger scientific research project, ‘Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding: From Static to Dynamic Discourses across National, Ethnic, Gender and Age Groups,’ funded by the European Research Council. Her research focuses on wartime sexual violence and gender-based violence in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Venera was responsible for research for the documentary ‘The Sky is Turning,’ which was the recipient of the 2018 Human Rights Award for the best journalistic piece, awarded by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Kosovo. Previously, she was the head of research at ORCA, an organization which focuses on academic integrity at the University of Prishtina, and worked as human rights programme manager at the non-governmental organisation, Youth Initiative for Human Rights-Kosovo. She also contributed and led projects on education, human rights, women and LGBT rights, and transitional justice in the Balkans. She is actively involved in the feminist and human rights movements/initiatives in Kosovo and in the Balkans. 

Elodie Douarin is an Applied Economist. She received a PhD in Economics from the University of London (Wye College) in 2008, and joined SSEES UCL in 2012, after a post-doc in the Economics department of the University of Sussex focusing on the micro consequences of conflict. She also worked as a researcher at Kent University (2007-2009) and as online tutor at SOAS (2008-2014). Her recent work has focused on social norms, with two main streams: one investigating the factors that shape social norms, and a second examining how social norms and individual beliefs impact on behaviours, either in the economic or political sphere. She started working on Kosovo in 2010, while a post-doc on an EU-funded project focusing on the micro consequences of conflict. She has published on the impact of war on livelihood choices and on the impact of war victimisation on political participation. In other strands of her research, she has been working on social norms relating to gender roles, and their impact on women’s engagement with work outside of home, and the links between individualistic values and pro-sociality, or using wellbeing measures to assess people’s tolerance towards corruption.

Irena Fiket is a Senior Research Fellow and academic coordinator of the Laboratory for Active Citizenship and Democratic Innovations at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her current research interests lie in deliberative democracy, citizens’ participation, democratic innovation and social movements and gender. On those topics she edited 4 books, published two books and numerous book chapters as well as articles in journals such as Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Italian Political Science Review, Javnost—The Public, European Union Politics, and others. She has been involved in numerous international projects, and she has most recently served as the academic coordinator of the Jean Monnet Network 'Active Citizenship: Promoting and Advancing Innovative Democratic Practices in the Western Balkans' and principal investigator of the Serbian team for a Horizon 2020 project, EnTrust.

Vujo Ilić is a Research Fellow and Assistant Director at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. He earned his PhD in political science from Central European University in Budapest, specializing in comparative politics. His research focuses on democracy, elections, political participation, conflicts, and violence, particularly in Southeast Europe. He has been involved in several European Commission-funded projects, such as Nets4Dem and EnTrust, and has served as a consultant for various international organizations. Most recently, he co-edited "Participatory Democratic Innovations in Southeast Europe: How to Engage in Flawed Democracies" (Routledge, 2024) and contributed to "Civic and Uncivic Values in Hungary: Value Transformation, Politics, and Religion" (Routledge, 2024). His articles have appeared in journals including Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Contemporary Southeastern Europe, and Philosophy and Society. He received the Central European University Best Dissertation Award and the Association for the Study of Nationalities Best Doctoral Paper Award.

Sanja Kajinić, PhD (CEU, Budapest, 2014) is an Adjunct professor at the Department of Politicaland Social Sciences at the University of Bologna, teaching Bosnian Croatian Serbian language,as well as a module on Gender and Popular Culture in Southeast Europe. At the Department ofCultural Heritage of the same university, she has also taught a course on the History of theBalkans. Her research interest focuses on the politics of memory and history of socialmovements in South Eastern Europe. She is the author of the monograph Post-Yugoslav QueerFestivals (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) and has written several articles on the post-Yugoslav socialand cultural history. As a recipient of the Marie Curie Early Stage Training Fellowship, she spent2007/2008 academic year at the Women’s Studies Center at the Department of InternationalRelations of the University of Lodz in Poland. She has participated in the research projects“GACY '68: A Game-changing year - Czechoslovakia and Europe in 1968” as well as the project“Democratization and Reconciliation in the Western Balkans'' within the Jean Monnet Network.She is a member of the Italian Society of Women Historians (SIS), of the AWSS (Associationfor Women in Slavic Studies), and of the Association for Cultural Studies.

Damir Kapidžić is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Sarajevo, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar. His research examines how democratic and authoritarian politics are institutionalized in the context of ethnic conflict, power-sharing, and democratic innovations. He focuses on the processes in Southeast European countries with comparative perspectives from Southeast Asia, East Africa, and the Middle East. He is a consultant on deliberative processes for the Council of Europe, and has designed and advised several deliberative processes and citizens’ assemblies in Southeast Europe, where post-conflict environment overlaps with substantial religious diversity. He is a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group and a principal investigator of EU Horizon—Contexts of Extremism in MENA and Balkan Societies, and an editor of 'Illiberal Politics in Southeast Europe: How Ruling Elites Undermine Democracy' (Routledge, 2022).

Denisa Kostovicova is Associate Professor of Global Politics at the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a scholar of conflict and peace processes with a particular interest in post-conflict reconstruction and transitional justice. She is the author of Reconciliation by Stealth: How People Talk about War Crimes(Cornell, 2023) and Kosovo: The Politics of Identity and Space(Routledge, 2005). Dr Kostovicova co-edited 8 volumes, including Rethinking Reconciliation and Transitional Justice After Conflict (Routledge, 2018). Dr Kostovicova’s research has been funded by a number of prestigious grants, including those by the Leverhulme Trust, MacArthur Foundation and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), among others. Her academic research has been published widely in world-leading scholarly journals, such as International Studies Quarterly, Security Dialogue, Review of International Studies, Third World Quarterly, Qualitative Research and International Journal of Transitional Justice. Dr Kostovicova currently directs a major research programme funded by the European Research Council (ERC), titled ‘Justice Interactions and Peace-building (JUSTINT).’ She has authored a number of policy papers on issues concerning Western Balkans’ European integration, post-conflict recovery and regional security. Her academic research and policy contributions have informed policy making at the EU, UN, and in the UK. Dr Kostovicova has a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining 杏吧论坛, she held junior research fellowships at Wolfson College, Cambridge and Linacre College, Oxford. 

Julie Litchfield is a Senior Lecturer in Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of Sussex. She is an applied microeconomist with over twenty years of teaching, research and leadership experience. The focus of her research is the study of poverty, inequality and income distribution, in particular how welfare is affected by a) migration and b) conflict. She was a Work Package Leader for the EU-funded MICROCON progra