Joe Djordjevski, Ph.D.

Junior Visiting Fellow - Summer Semester 2022

Joe Djordjevski is a junior visiting research fellow in the field of excellence, spending summer semester 2022 in Graz.

During his stay he will work on the project “Socialist Yugoslavia and the Making of a European Cultural Identity on the Eastern Adriatic Coastline, 1945-Present” examining the role Socialist Yugoslavia played in creating, presenting, and fostering cultural and symbolic processes of Europeanization on the Eastern Adriatic Coastline.

"This project will challenge the idea of a clear rupture between the Socialist and Post-Socialist periods by demonstrating continuities between the Yugoslav modernization project and its former Republics."

Yugoslavia’s modernization of the Adriatic coast was heavily reliant on tourism, which emphasized the cultural heritage of the coastline. While Yugoslavia as a Non-Aligned country during the Cold War sought to establish ties with both the East and the West, it presented the Adriatic coast as a quintessential European region in hopes to build cultural, economic, and political bridges with Western Europe. Djordjevski will focus on the cultural and material aspects of the coast that have been fundamental at both the regional and local levels in attaching the Eastern Adriatic to a conspicuously European identity. 

Joe Djordjevski studied History at the UC San Diego. His dissertation focused on how tourism and environmental protection in Socialist Yugoslavia transformed the physical environment and societies of the Adriatic coast