New Perspectives: Rethinking the Yugoslav Wars Through Microhistories

This event explores how a microhistorical approach can deepen our understanding of the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s. Moving beyond and interpreting ICTY records and elite political accounts differently, it foregrounds local voices and everyday experiences to illuminate the complex dynamics of conflict at the community level. By engaging with sources such as oral histories, local archives, and court records, the discussion will focus on how ordinary people understood and experienced the war, thereby complicating nationalist narratives of fixed victimhood and perpetration. The discussion will emphasize the value of looking at the war “from the ground up” to reveal how communities navigated violence, solidarity, and survival. In doing so, it highlights the potential of microhistory not only to challenge linear, top-down interpretations but also to complicate the historiography of the Yugoslav Wars by centering human experiences that nationalist discourses often erase.

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Host or Publisher Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies