INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the Institute of European Studies has undergone major changes. The Institute has become a place recognized in regional as well as wider academic circles as one of the most interesting academic places for meetings, debates, discussions and critical assessment of contemporary issues. As readers will be able to see, Institute’s panels cover a wide variety of programs, from major international and regional conferences, to guest appearances and big names of European and world science, then to important actors from the region, politicians, diplomats, to young scientists and PhD students who for the first time appear in the events like those.
We have covered wide range of topics. The Institute is primarily focused toward field of political science, but because of our multidisciplinary composition and scientific curiosity, it is open to controversial topics, and atypical research such as those in bioethics, conspiracy theories and so on.
However, the most important change came with a generation shift within the Institute’s staff. Some colleagues retired, and young colleagues came instead. Thanks to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development and its decision to give the opportunity to employ over thousand PhD students, we welcomed six newcomers and great researchers, who have brought many good things to the Institute. They are very talented and educated young scientists, highly skilled in the areas of their interests, but who are also interested in other very specific topics and cultural areas thanks to their knowledge of foreign languages.
Meanwhile, those young colleagues have begun to build their scientific and public careers, they are publishing scientific articles and attending international conferences in the country and abroad. However, in this publishing we are presenting one of their first activities since they’ve joined the Institute’s project. Writing reports after each academic event contributed significantly both to the Institute and young colleagues. The reports are presenting in a concise manner everything that was discussed during events, and thanks to the internet portal stanjestvari.com, with which we have long-lasting cooperation, the public was informed about those events. On the other hand, young colleagues attended for the first time in the public sphere, gaining skills and raising attention to their scientific and publicistic potentials, which was not unnoticed.
Overall, this Yearbook presents the first year of continuous monitoring of the academic events in 2018/19. By doing so, we want to leave the trace about all the activities and first academic steps of new great generation of our colleagues. We also believe that our academic community will find a lot of valuable in this manuscript that would otherwise be unrecorded, and that this Yearbook would help them to get familiar with the work of some actors and topics, which can be a useful basis for future research.
Miša Đurković