Sarajevo, Mostar, Srebrenica, Klotjevac, Bosnia & Herzegovina

Learning from the past – Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995 – 2017: Lessons Not Learned?

when 3 July 2017 - 16 July 2017
language English
duration 2 weeks
credits 6 EC
fee EUR 560

The 4th international summer school “Learning from the past – Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995 – 2017: Lessons Not Learned?” aims to make a contribution to the process of dealing with the past, reconciliation and transitional justice approaches in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and the region. The School will look into what lessons have (not) been learned and why history seems to be repeating itself. By examining the ways how and what we as students and researchers can learn from the recent past in order to confront the challenges in the present, the International University of Sarajevo (IUS) promotes the idea of education as an essential tool for reconciliation and an agent of positive societal change in a post-war country like Bosnia and Herzegovina. Furthermore, the school emphasizes the importance of experiential and reflexive learning, intercultural learning and action learning as practical pedagogical tools in such a post-conflict context. Subsequently, the main field trip to Eastern Bosnia and a three-day-stay with a local family in the village of Klotjevac aims to provide the participants with the opportunity to experience learning beyond the classroom, in a community setting, and obtain more intensive hands-on practice with methods discussed during the class sessions.

Course leader

Nerkez Opacin

Target group

The International University of Sarajevo welcomes applicants from a wide range of educational backgrounds. We invite applications from across the globe and from both undergraduate and graduate students as well as from young professionals interested in the topics related to transitional justice, international relations, conflict analysis and resolution, peace research, security studies, preventing diplomacy, anthropology, international law, history, sociology and ethnicity studies. Although most of you will be currently enrolled at a university or college, we also welcome applicants who have been away from formal education for some years. The participants are expected to have developed, or are in the process of developing, some basic background knowledge of and demonstrate their interest in the Balkans, BiH and post-conflict issues affecting societies after politically-motivated violence.

Course aim

The 4th international summer school “Learning from the past – Bosnia and Herzegovina 1995 – 2017: Lessons Not Learned” provides an opportunity to undergraduate students and graduate students as well as to emerging researchers and professionals to meet and study with people from different countries, cultures and academic disciplines, on a cosmopolitan campus in Sarajevo and in real post-conflict communities. Sadly, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Balkan region, in many regards remain in a post-war state, where there is great need for healing from the past trauma, while the tensions that led to the 1990s war are largely undealt with, still affecting everyday life of majority of citizen of BiH.

Although there are many GOs and NGOs in and around BiH working towards advancing transitional justice and reconciliation, they hardly show any tangible or real-world outcomes. BiH and the Balkans are the largest living laboratory for this area. By learning about the past and current issues in BiH, this summer school also commemorates the events by remembering and discussing the past atrocities, and at the same time learning from and moving beyond the tragic events in the past in order to achieve lasting peace in the region. For this to be achieved, a range of teaching and learning approaches and strategies will be utilized - delivered in a form of lectures, class discussions, workshops, field visits and conferences - and focusing on comparative studies enabling the participants to learn in an experiential and cross-cultural context .



Furthermore, this summer school will provide an opportunity to filter previously generated knowledge in regard to conflict resolution and further advance methodological tools and techniques applicable to research in the field of genocide, transitional justice, post-conflict resolution, peace-building, security studies, preventing diplomacy, international law, sociology, anthropology and other associated fields. It will also promote an active involvement of participants in order to better understand each other's ethnic background and challenge existing stereotypes and myths about the ‘Other’.



The summer school will apply an integrative interdisciplinary perspective drawing upon a variety of disciplinary approaches inherent to existent methodological frameworks of social sciences. Its overall aim is to capitalize from the previous academic and professional work and research relating to dealing with the past, transitional justice and reconciliation in post-conflict societies.

Credits info

6 EC
The students will receive a certificate of participation after completion of the summer school. Furthermore, we will issue a statement regarding the number of ECTS credits we would assign to this course, based on the number of hours spent in class, preparation time and completed assignments. Your university can then evaluate this course and decide whether they will indeed award ECTS credits.

Fee info

EUR 560: Three packages are available Local, Silver and Gold.

Scholarships

In case a participant does not want to visit the four-day-long fieldtrip to Srebrenica and Klotjevac she or he can have a reduction of 120 EURO on each package. IUS is in the process of securing additional funds from sponsors and funding bodies. The fees