Summer School - Learning From The Past, 3-16 July 2017, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Purpose Of The Summer School

The 4^th international summer school “Learning from the past – Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995 – 2017: Lessons Not Learned” provides an opportunity to undergraduate students and graduate students as well as to emerging researchers and professionals to meet and study with people from different countries, cultures and academic disciplines, on a cosmopolitan campus in Sarajevo and in real post-conflict communities. Sadly, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Balkan region, in many regards remain in a post-war state, where there is a great need for healing from the past trauma, while the tensions that led to the 1990s war are largely undealt with, still affecting everyday life of the majority of the citizen of BiH.

Although there are many GOs and NGOs in and around BiH working towards advancing transitional justice and reconciliation, they hardly show any tangible or real-world outcomes. BiH and the Balkans are the largest living laboratory for this area. By learning about the past and current issues in BiH, this summer school also commemorates the events by remembering and discussing the past atrocities, and at the same time learning from and moving beyond the tragic events in the past in order to achieve lasting peace in the region. For this to be achieved, a range of teaching and learning approaches and strategies will be utilized - delivered in a form of lectures, class discussions, workshops, field visits and conferences - and focusing on comparative studies enabling the participants to learn in an experiential and cross-cultural context. 

Furthermore, this summer school will provide an opportunity to filter previously generated knowledge in regard to conflict resolution and further advance methodological tools and techniques applicable to research in the field of genocide, transitional justice, post-conflict resolution, peace-building, security studies, preventing diplomacy, international law, sociology, anthropology and other associated fields. It will also promote an active involvement of participants in order to better understand each other's ethnic background and challenge existing stereotypes and myths about the ‘Other’.

The summer school will apply an integrative interdisciplinary perspective drawing upon a variety of disciplinary approaches inherent to existent methodological frameworks of social sciences. Its overall aim is to capitalize from the previous academic and professional work and research relating to dealing with the past, transitional justice and reconciliation in post-conflict societies. 

Detailed Information

The International University of Sarajevo welcomes applicants from a wide range of educational backgrounds. We invite applications from across the globe and from both undergraduate and graduate students as well as from young professionals interested in the topics related to transitional. Although most of you will be currently enrolled at a university or college, we also welcome applicants who have been away from formal education for some years. The participants are expected to have developed, or are in the process of developing, some basic background knowledge of and demonstrate their interest in the Balkans, BiH and post-conflict issues affecting societies after politically-motivated violence.

The summer school will consist of three two-hour classroom sessions on most days, followed by visits to BiH government ministries, international organizations, NGOs, a two-day-long field visit to Herzegovina, and a three-day-long field visit to the Srebrenica Memorial Centre (Potocari) and a post-genocide community (the village of Klotjevac) in Eastern Bosnia. 

Each classroom session will be a mixture of lecture presentations and interactive discussions. The field trips will provide the participants with the opportunity to experience learning beyond the classroom, in a community setting, and obtain more intensive hands-on practice with methods discussed during the sessions. Attendance and active participation in all activities is compulsory during the whole summer school. In addition, all participants will be required to work on their own research papers throughout the summer school and submit them at the end of the program. To ensure a common ground for the in-class discussions, participants are required to complete the required readings before the sessions (to be provided electronically by the lecturers).

The  certificate of successful completion of the summer school will be issued upon accomplishing the assessment tasks comprising of:

-           Attending the sessions and field trips;

-           Active participation during class sessions and field trips; and

-           Research paper for submission or a reflexive piece dealing with one or more aspects of the Summer School.

The language of instruction during the entire summer school will be English. However, a number of lecturers, including the Summer School coordinator, are also fluent in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, German and Turkish. Most course materials will be available in electronic forms. All the technological requirements such as laptop, projector, white board, markers, speakers and other logistics for the sessions will be made available by the organizer during the entire summer school period.

Terms and Conditions 

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