AVENUES OF COOPERATION CONFERENCE: TOWARD A REIMAGINED REGIONAL BELONGING

On 3-4 December 2021, the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities – Skopje in cooperation with the Visegrad Fund and Balkan Trust for Democracy organized the “Avenues of Cooperation Conference: Toward a Reimagined Regional Belonging.” The conference was a part of the project “Avenues of Cooperation.”

At the two-day event, scholars and public intellectuals from North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, debated and through a combined approach of research and advocacy, seeked to find a solution to the cultural conflict between the Macedonian and the Bulgarian state related to their respective nation-building narratives which has caused a stalemate in the Union’s enlargement process blocking the next step of North Macedonia’s accession to the European Union. The conference was part of a more complex project initiative which seeks to understand the conflict, offer possible solutions to it, and build bridges of academic and civil society cooperation that will contribute to a sustainable overcoming of the problem at hand.

The speakers at the conference were:

• Katerina Kolozova, Senior Researcher/Full Professor, ISSH-Skopje
• Costas Douzinas, Professor at the Birkbeck University in London and President of the Nicos Poulantzas Institute in Athens
• Spasimir Domaradzki, Ass. Professor at University of Warsaw and member of the editorial board of Res Publica Nova
• Gábor Egry, Director at the Institute of Political History-Budapest
• Michal Vit, Professor at Metropolitan University Prague and a senior fellow and Director of the Institute of Modern Development in Prague
• Marta Szpala, Senior Fellow in the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw and Coordinator of the Think Tank Forum during the Polish presidency in the Berlin Process.
• Dimitar Bechev, ISSH-Skopje visiting faculty/Oxford University
• Stefan Detchev, Prof., ISSH-Skopje visiting faculty/ /South-West University of Blagoevgrad
• Ljupco Petkovski, ISSH-Skopje visiting faculty