Program

Summer Institute for the Study of East Central and Southeastern Europe, 2026

Project

The Women of Krajina: Everyday Lives and Political Agency in Wartime and its Aftermath

Department

Abstract

This project examines the everyday lives and political agency of noncombatant women in the Republic of Serbian Krajina, a militarized parastate from 1991 to 1995 whose social world remains largely undocumented. Focusing on Serb, Croat, Hungarian, German, and Roma women, it investigates how they navigated violence, care, and community in Beli Manastir and Knin, and how these practices became forms of political agency. Building on a research network in Croatia, and drawing on digital archives and forty interviews across two generations in Beli Manastir, Knin, and Novi Sad, the project approaches Krajina “from below,” revealing how marginalized women shaped political life amid conflict.