Western Balkans at a Crossroads: Inaugural Research Network Conference
Södertörn University︱21 May 2026, 9.30 am - 5 pm.
Europe is undergoing profound geopolitical and social transformations. The full-scale war against Ukraine, shifting global power relations, democratic backsliding, and renewed debates on security and borders have fundamentally altered conditions for European identity. Within this context, the region of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia) occupies a critical and ambivalent position in broader debates on Europe: Sometimes understood as Europe’s other, “periphery,” or “waiting room,” sometimes (re)invoked as a central node in the geopolitical turmoil. The unresolved past continues to haunt this uncertain present, yet at the same time, transformative processes and unexpected challenges to existing orders can be noted in the region. Taken together, how to make sense of these urgent dynamics?
To answer to these challenges, we invite you to a one-day conference at Södertörn University. It has a twofold aim:
- Advance the research agenda on the Western Balkans in Sweden
- Establish a national, interdisciplinary research network on the Western Balkans
The conference is an opportunity to present new research and take stock of the existing knowledge base in Sweden. Ongoing research engages with (inter alia) democracy, authoritarianism and civic resistance, post-conflict politics and memory regimes, EU integration hopes and enlargement fatigue, environmental politics and extractivism, aesthetic relations and ruptures in the region, migration, borders and diasporas. We invite research participants to present their work on these and other emerging topics.
The conference will provide space for interdisciplinary discussions on knowledge production, positionalities and ethical challenges. The very label “the Western Balkans” merits critical reflection. Is it a meaningful analytical category, or does it obscure more than it explains? In dialogue with policymakers there will be room to discuss how and why research on the region is produced, funded, and circulated.
A national research network will stimulate intellectual and collegial ties between junior and senior scholars across disciplines and institutions and overall enhance the visibility and impact of research on the Western Balkans. The inaugural conference, organised by The Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) at Södertörn University, is a first step in this direction.
The conference will include roundtables/panels as well as collective discussions, and the day will conclude with a conference dinner. To apply to the conference and/or sign up for the network, please enter your details into an online form using the button below.
