JUSTINT
Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding: From Static to Dynamic Discourses across National, Ethnic, Gender and Age Groups (JUSTINT)
‘Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding (JUSTINT)’ is a project supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant and directed by Professor Denisa Kostovicova.
Focused on the four former Yugoslav countries - Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Croatia - the JUSTINT project provides a novel way of analysing how post-conflict justice practices advance or hinder peacebuilding by studying the interactive and dynamic aspects of discourse.
About the project
How can people address the legacy of inter-ethnic violence and reconcile after mass atrocity crimes?
The founding vision of transitional justice as a field of scholarship and practice that is engaged with different ways post-conflict states address past wrongs is normative. Addressing the legacy of human rights violations and war crimes is supposed to reconcile war-torn communities and advance peace-building.
However, instead of promoting peace and reconciliation, transitional justice practices have often had the opposite impact; they have further divided ethnic communities, distorted the truth about suffering, and traumatised rather than dignified the victims. It is important that we produce robust evidence for claims about the effects of transitional justice, and identify conditions under which transitional justice practices can promote or, alternatively, undermine peace-building.
The JUSTINT project provides a novel way of analysing how post-conflict justice practices advance or hinder peace-building by studying an interactive and dynamic aspect of discourse. Until now, we have relied on statements by politicians, civil society actors or victims to understand their response to post-conflict justice, and studied them as static discourses. JUSTINT turns to the study of communicative exchanges to understand how discussions about the violent past unfold, and to what effect.
The JUSTINT project innovates in the field of transitional justice by studying large volumes of textual data at the level of words and conversational sequences. Quantitative and qualitative text analysis methods are applied to interactions in face-to-face and virtual deliberative domains (courts, parliaments, civil society debates, and in social media) in four former Yugoslav countries: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Croatia.
Project outcomes
Policy engagement
Read about the impact of the JUSTINT project on justice and peacebuilding policy across Europe.
News
Discover the awards and recognition received by the JUSTINT team, as well as news and media features.
Meet the team
Principal Investigator
Professor Denisa Kostovicova
Professor Denisa Kostovicova is a Professor in Global Politics at the European Institute.
Research Team
Dr Ivor Sokolić
Dr Ivor Sokolić is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Hertfordshire. He was a Research Officer on the JUSTINT project at the European Institute, from 2018 to 2021.
Dr Vesna Popovski
Dr Vesna Popovski is LSE Fellow in Conflict and Post-Conflict Studies at the European Institute. She was a Research Assistant on the JUSTINT project.
Dr Sanja Vico
Dr Sanja Vico is a Lecturer in Communications and Digital Media, Department of Communications, Drama and Film Faculty of Humanities at the University of Exeter. She was a Research Officer on the JUSTINT project at the European Institute.
Lanabi la Lova
Lanabi la Lova is a Research Officer on the JUSTINT Project at the European Institute and a PhD Candidate at the Department of International Relations at LSE.
Venera Cocaj
Venera Cocaj is a PhD candidate in European Studies at the European Institute.
Sarah Jewett
Sarah Jewett is an MRes/PhD candidate in Political Science at the Department of Government at LSE.
Peer Collaborators
Paul Drew
Paul Drew is Professor in the Department of Language & Linguistic Science, University of York.
Dr Tolga Sinmazdemir
Dr Tolga Sinmazdemir is a Senior Lecturer in Political Methodology in the Department of Politics and International Studies at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Contact
Professor Denisa Kostovicova
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
United Kingdom
Email: d.kostovicova@lse.ac.uk