Research interests:

• Yugoslavia
• Global history
• Memory studies
• Global Cold War history
• socialist internationalism

Current research project:

"Globalising the Yugoslav Revolution in the Postcolonial World: Veterans, Memory and Transnational Networks of Solidarity during the Cold War"

Funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (APART-GSK, 2024-2028)

Yugoslavia and its institutions and mass organisations invested serious efforts in diplomatic, financial, military and humanitarian assistance to anti-colonial struggle across Africa between the late 1950s and early 1980s. Centring on the exchanges between Yugoslav Partisans and anti-colonial liberation movements, the project explores the role of memory and war legacies in Yugoslav socialist internationalism and initiatives of anti-colonial solidarity. The project focuses on the narratives of the common struggle for liberation, transfers of knowledge in war commemoration, and the sharing of the Yugoslav experience of the People’s Liberation War and the postwar building of state socialism in the postcolonial world. The project combines approaches of transnational history and memory studies with a focus on the agency of war veterans, exploring the multidirectional war memory and connected histories of antifascism and anti-colonialism. It is grounded in multi-sited archival research in the post-Yugoslav space and Algeria as the main case studies and Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique as additional examples.

The Partisans constitute a valuable lens of analysis as key political actors in socialist Yugoslavia, leading agents of the culture of war remembrance and as women and men with a direct experience of war and revolution. Their agency in the decolonisation context transpired through, on the one hand, the veteran association SUBNOR as a socio-political organisation involved in all Yugoslav solidarity initiatives and, on the other, individually as the Partisans occupied leading positions in state institutions, embassies, and other socio-political organisations. They were also key actors of Yugoslav non-alignment, illuminating its multi-level nature as interstate and centralised as well as bottom-up phenomenon and uncovering complex networks and discourses of anti-colonial solidarity.

Selected publications

Book

Đureinović, Jelena. The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia: Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution. London: Routledge, 2020.

Journal Articles

Đureinović, Jelena. “Internationalizing the Revolution: Veterans and Transnational Cultures of Memory and Solidarity between Yugoslavia and Algeria.” International Review of Social History, (2024). https://doi-org.uaccess.univie.ac.at/10.1017/S0020859023000652.

‘Marching the Victorious March: Populism and Memory Appropriation of the Yugoslav Partisans in Today’s Serbia‘. Nationalities Papers, 2022. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/nps.2022.50.

(with Jade McGlynn). “The Alliance of Victory: Russo-Serbian Memory Diplomacy.” Memory Studies, (March 2022). https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980211073108.