Public Lecture – Big Ideas for Democracy: Marija Radoman

Register here

Building Democracy: Emotions and the Student Movement in Serbia 2024/25

My presentation focuses on the experiences and emotions of students involved in the student protests in Serbia 2024/25. The research looks at how emotions shaped both the mobilization of the movement and the students’ collective identity. What began as a student response to the collapse of a canopy in the city of Novi Sad quickly grew into a large-scale social and political movement. The timeframe of the research is limited: the results cover the period from the start of the protests in November 2024 to April 2025, even though the protests are still ongoing.

In the first part of my talk, I will explain the broader context, the challenges faced by student and citizens in their struggle for a democratic society, and the authoritarian tendencies of the goverment. I will also give a short overview of the dynamics of the protests and key events that kept them going, explaining different protest stages. In the second part, I will present some findings from research conducted by the team at the Institute for Sociological Research, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. My research focus was on the role of emotions in the students’ participation in the protests, and more broadly, on how emotions contribute to shaping a new political generation in a post-socialist context. The study is based on 32 semi-structured interviews with students participating in the protests. I hypothesize that the student movement, with its direct democratic practices, independence from political parties, and collective life on occupied faculties across the country, represents alternative forms of democratic organization, shaped through emotional experiences, and represents the emergence of a new political generation.

Bio

Marija Radoman is a PhD sociologist with over a decade of experience in gender and queer studies, political values, LGBTQ+ rights, and research methodologies. Her academic work focuses on the intersections of social structures and individual experiences. She currently serves as a Research Associate at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, affiliated with the Institute for Sociological Research.