The Eightieth Anniversary of the Institute for Balkan Studies (1934–2014)

Abstract

The history of the Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts has seen two distinct phases but linked by one underlying idea: fostering scholarly interpretation of the past of the region and encouraging the Balkan nations to learn more about and get to better know one another. Within a span of eighty years the Institute was inactive for more than a quarter century: from 1941, when it was closed down at the order of the Nazi German occupying authorities, until 1969. In the first phase of its work the Institute was subsidized by King Alexander I Karadjordjević of Yugoslavia, in the second by the Republic of Serbia through the Serbian Academy of Sciences as its most prestigious scientific institution. Since the pre-war Institute was seen as a royalist establishment by the new communist regime, its post-war successor was given a somewhat more up-to-date name to highlight the scholarly dimension of balkanology, a field of study that brings together various disciplines of humanities and social sciences.