Čarna Brković

The workshop will offer PhD and MA students an opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing research in a mock “phone call” setting. The format is designed to recreate the experience of encountering a new researcher or interlocutor in an unfamiliar academic environment: how do you introduce your project if you cannot see the person you talk to? How do you explain what you are working on to someone who may not know your field? How do you respond to questions, take feedback, and communicate your ideas when you have limited time?

Through these conversations, participants will have the chance to practice giving and receiving feedback, presenting their research to new audiences, thinking on their feet, and navigating unfamiliar academic encounters.

The workshop is intended as a safe, caring, and collegial space where unfinished ideas are welcome and feedback is constructive. It is an opportunity to step outside the usual presentation format, experiment with different ways of talking about your research, and learn from one another’s questions and perspectives.

To understand socialist humanitarianism on its own terms, I propose reading it through the double grain of state socialism and the end of history. Such an analytical approach illuminates the role of racial socialism—socialist ideologies of “race” and local racial projects—and its interactions with global racial hierarchies, showing how these ideologies were shaped by particular value constellations.

By discussing a 1961 humanitarian initiative of the Yugoslav Red Cross that brought sixty children and young people from the Congo to Tivat, Montenegro, this talk sheds light on the workings of socialist whiteness. This was not a colourist project but rather a normative regime of political value with two key characteristics: it ascribed superiority to Yugoslavs on the basis of their greater socialist experience, and it overlooked present problems in favour of a future in which “race” would no longer matter.