2026-06-25 –, Room 302 (Seats 48)
In the aftermath of the Yugoslav Wars, the successor states have witnessed an unprecedented rise in historical revisionism and nationalist mythmaking. Once imagined as part of a “globalized” Europe striving toward integration and reconciliation, the region is increasingly shaped by politics of exclusion and competing national memories. This paper explores how post-Yugoslav societies, caught between global interconnectedness and local retrenchment, mobilize history as a political weapon in the struggle for identity and legitimacy.
Drawing on examples from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, the paper traces how global narratives of human rights, transitional justice, and Europeanization have been reinterpreted—or outright rejected—through nationalist lenses. Revisionist discourse reframes the wars of the 1990s not as aggression or genocide but as defensive struggles, restoring pre-globalization notions of sovereignty and ethno-religious unity. Such processes mirror earlier historical precedents: imperial mythologies, Cold War alignments, and the selective remembrance of the Ottoman and Habsburg pasts.
By situating these dynamics within broader debates on globalization’s retreat, the paper argues that the post-Yugoslav experience exemplifies a world that is connected—through media, migration, and transnational memory politics—yet not genuinely globalized. The persistence of competing historical imaginaries challenges the idea of a universal narrative of progress and integration. Ultimately, examining the interplay between revisionism and nationalism in the Balkans reveals how closed borders do not merely separate, but also reshape, our collective understanding of the past and its place in world history.
Alek Barović is a Montenegrin journalist, civic activist, and PhD candidate in Genocide Studies at the University of Padova, Italy. His research focuses on the intersection of religion, post-genocidal societies, and national identity, with a particular emphasis on Bosniak, Armenian, and Kurdish communities. He is a Research Fellow at the Genocide Research Center at Soran University in Iraqi Kurdistan and a Visiting Assistant in Research at Yale University’s MacMillan Center Genocide Studies Program. Alek serves as Vice Executive Secretary of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) and has published on topics including memory preservation, identity formation, transitional justice, and heritage destruction. He actively engages in public scholarship, bridging academic research and advocacy to address genocide denial and promote remembrance. His work reflects a commitment to fostering dialogue between scholars, policymakers, and affected communities to advance the field of genocide studies.