LSEE Research on South Eastern Europe invites you to the book launch of International Courts and Mass Atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia, by Dr Ivor Sokolic, Research Officer at the Department of Gevernment, LSE.
Join us for an evening discussion exploring why universal human rights norms struggle to take hold in post-conflict societies@ LSEE - All Welcome!
International Courts and Mass Atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia
The extra-legal effects of international and domestic war crimes trials continue to puzzle researchers and practitioners. In the former Yugoslav states, the legacy of conflict and issues of transitional justice remains central in politics, society and culture. This book provides a new theoretical and methodological approach to one of these puzzles: why universal human rights norms become distorted or undermined when they reach local publics. It investigates the social and cultural contexts that transitional justice processes take place in by looking at how emotional everyday narratives can hamper the spread of norms in society. In Croatia, these narratives define how the public understands the rule of law, history and minority rights.
Ivor Sokolić is a Research Officer at the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He works on the ERC funded project “Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding: From Static to Dynamic Discourses across National, Ethnic, Gender and Age Groups”. He is interested in studying processes of transitional justice and reconciliation in the aftermath of conflict. He focuses his research on the former Yugoslav states and is interested in applying novel methodological approaches to the study of post-conflict societies. His PhD from the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), awarded in 2016, researched why the transitional justice process in Croatia, following the 1991-1995 conflict, failed to instil universal human rights norms in society. Prior to beginning his PhD, Ivor completed an MSc and BSc in European Politics from the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Before joining the European Institute, Ivor was a Research Officer on the AHRC funded “Art and Reconciliation: Conflict, Culture and Community” project at the LSE Department of Government.
Denisa Kostovicova is an Associate Professor in Global Politics at the European Institute and the Department of Government.
Discussants:
Dr Rachel Kerr is a Reader in International Relations and Contemporary War in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She holds a BA in International History and Politics from the University of Leeds and an MA and PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. Dr Kerr’s research interests are in the area of law and war, in particular war crimes and transitional/post-conflict justice, and she co-directs the War Crimes Research Group at King’s. Her books include: The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: Law, Diplomacy and Politics (OUP, 2004); Peace and Justice: Seeking Accountability after War (Polity, 2007), with Eirin Mobekk, The Military on Trial: The British Army in Iraq (Wolf Legal Publishers, 2008), and Prosecuting War Crimes: Lessons and Legacies of 20 Years of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Routledge, 2013), co-edited with James Gow and Zoran Pajic.
Dr Neven Andjelic is Reader in International Relations and Human Rights at Regent's University London. He served from 2014 to 2018 at the Council of Europe’s Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. Dr Andjelic is also Visiting Professor at the University of Bologna and Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE. He was Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. Beside the academic career, he worked in news media for many years. This included work for CNN, BBC, ITN and Channel 4 in the UK and contributions to media in former Yugoslavia. Prior to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Neven was leading young journalist in the country and peace activist. He writes for academic journals and publications and has published a book ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina: The End of a Legacy' (London and Oregon: Frank Cass, 2003). His academic interests are interdisciplinary with research expertise is in the fields of International Relations, Nationalism, Human Rights and Media. He focused majority of his research on Europe and The Balkans in particular.
Dr Jasna Dragović-Soso is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Politics and International Relations Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of ‘Saviours of the Nation’: Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism (Hurst/McGill, 2002) and other works on Yugoslav history and politics. She is currently working on memory and transitional justice processes in relation to the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and has authored texts on processes of ‘coming to terms with the past’ in comparative perspective; public debates about wartime responsibility and denial; the politics of acknowledgment and apology; and on attempts to create truth commissions in the post-Yugoslav region.