The Doctoral Program of International Studies at ELTE, Faculty of Social Sciences, together with the Civil Society, Human Rights, and Regimes Change in Central and Eastern Europe CEEPUS Network and the Department of Human Rights and Politics, cordially invites you to the lecture by Nemanja Džuverović.

Nemanja Džuverović (PhD) is a Professor in Peace Studies at the University of Belgrade, a Visiting Scholar at Northwestern University, and serves as Academic Chair of the Knowledge Hub on Democracy within the Circle U. European University Alliance.

About the lecture

We are living in a world where everything and everyone is constantly assessed and reassessed. This never-ending competition is primarily done by creating various indexes that impose hierarchies, including among states and societies. The notion that peace can be measured and quantified has been heavily criticized in academia, particularly in peace and conflict studies. An alternative approach based on ‘local voices’ and ethnographic methods understands peace as a subjective category depending on personal experience and social context. This lecture introduces the concept of hybridity in peace measurement. Drawing on findings from the Balkan Peace Index, it explores whether local researchers’ knowledge and ‘good enough methodologies’ can be combined with big data to produce an index that is policy-relevant yet grounded in local realities. The Balkan Peace Index aims to generate locally owned knowledge about a region often described in exclusively negative terms. If successful, such knowledge may assist EU decision makers in forming policies toward the region and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the Balkans in Europe.

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