Marija Grujić, Ph.D.

Junior Visiting Fellow - Winter Semester 2022/2023

Marija Grujić is a junior visiting research fellow in the field of excellence, spending the winter semester 2022/03 in Graz. She is a sociologist of gender and migration with an interdisciplinary academic background and cross-sectoral professional experience (IGO, NGOs) in the EU and Western Balkans. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Goethe University Frankfurt and has obtained degrees in philosophy (BA, Belgrade University) and religious studies (MSc, Sarajevo University).

During her stay in Graz, Marija will finalise a manuscript based on her doctoral thesis, "Belonging in Unhomely Homelands - Intersections Between Internal Displacement and Gendered Nationalism among Kosovo Serbs," which is forthcoming in Berghahn Books. It examines oscillations of belonging in the biographical narratives of displaced Kosovo Serbs in Serbia who fled Kosovo after the NATO bombing in 1999 and Kosovo Albanian reprisals (1999, 2004). Similar to other Internally Displaced Persons - from countries such as Ukraine, Georgia and Israel/Palestine - whose dis/ emplacement interlinks with disputes over territory, Kosovo Serbs do not hold a refugee status since they fled their designated ethno-national homeland.

By introducing a novel framework of 'oscillations of belonging', i.e., assessing fluctuations between belonging, unbelonging and non-belonging, and focusing on the transformations of femininities and masculinities in displaced Kosovo Serbs' narratives, my project offers insights into intersectional aspects of refugees' coping with multiple losses (social, material, emotional). Those losses are unfolding in both their homelands, Kosovo and Serbia, and across various spatialities and temporalities.

Currently, Marija is a Researcher at ICMPD, an international organization focusing on evidence-based research and migration policy. Prior to this post, she was a Lecturer at the Chair for Women and Gender Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt.

Marija published scholarly work on the meaning of home in dis/emplacement, religion, gender and faith-based peacebuilding. Her policy-focused expertise includes research on migration decision-making, transit in the Western Balkan host countries (especially Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina), family and gendered-related issues in the context of integration. She received several academic awards, including DAAD and STIBENT scholarships.