Project team
Defence Research Centre
Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana
PROJECT MANAGER: Rok Zupančič, PhD
Dr Rok Zupančič is an associate professor and researcher at the Defence Research Centre. His main fields of interest are conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Southeast Europe. In this project, he is primarily responsible for connecting the two pillars of the project, developing conceptual and methodological approaches, and partly for conducting research in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Baljvine), Kosovo (Kamenica) and Croatia (Vukovar).
TEAM MEMBERS:
Metka Kuhar, PhD
Dr Metka Kuhar is a full professor of social psychology and researcher at University of Ljubljana. Her main fields of research and teaching are psychology of communication and psychological trauma. She was the principal investigator of the research project on adverse childhood experiences and their consequences in adulthood (2018–2020). She gained therapeutic knowledge and experience through several body-oriented approaches.
Janja Vuga Beršnak, PhD
Dr. Janja Vuga Beršnak is an associate professor and senior research fellow at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. Her research interests include military sociology with a focus on families and adolescents/children, peace operations, and crisis management. In recent years, her research has focused on socio-ecological models of health outcomes among military servicemen/women and families. She leads the project military-specific risk factors for health and well-being in military families.
Miha Šlebir, PhD
Dr Miha Šlebir is an officer in the Slovenian Armed Forces and an associate member of the Defence Research Centre. He holds a bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. He majored in Defence studies, focusing on topics related to the operations of the armed forces. Dr Miha Šlebir methodologically grounded his PhD research on theory of concept formation and concept analysis, as well as on the theory of complex (adaptive) systems. With the acquired knowledge, he will focus on conceptualization and operationalization of structural factors of anxiety in post-conflict societies, as well as on the analysis of research results.
Faris Kočan, PhD
Dr Faris Kočan is a researcher at the Centre of International Relations at the Faculty of Social Sciences. In the project, he will primarily deal with the preparation of conceptual framework for the analysis of the interplay between structural factors and anxieties in post-conflict environments. He will employ the conceptual framework, which is based on intertwining of structural factors and anxiety, on the case of Baljvine (Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina), where the quality of interethnic relations between Bosniaks and Bosnian Serbs are relatively high.
Anja Kolak, MSc
Anja Kolak is currently a PhD candidate and a researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. She published several research articles and has a vast experience in managing national and international research projects. Additionally, she was involved as a researcher in numerous research projects (e.g., Radicalization towards violence: key concepts, foreign approaches and the case of Slovenia). She is an experienced interviewer, who also conducted several face-to-face interviews. As she is already engaged in several other projects at the Faculty of Social Sciences, her contribution to this project will be minimal – first and foremost for the analysis of secondary and primary sources.
Anđela Đorđević, MA
Anđela Đorđević is a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. In this project, she will primarily focus on researching interethnic relations in Kamenica.
Irena Bolko
Irena Bolko is a research assistant at Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. In this project, she will work on questionnaire design and perform statistical data analysis.