Milica POPOVIC

Dr Milica Popović is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Lead of the Open Society University Network Global Observatory on Academic Freedom at the Central European University in Vienna. In parallel to her academic career and teaching experience at Sciences Po in Paris and at CEU in Vienna, Popović gained 20 years of professional experience within international organizations, and she has worked as an independent researcher and consultant in the European Higher Education Area since 2008. Her professional expertise in the field of higher education policy, combined with her academic career, led her to the field of academic freedom and its relationship with identity politics and memory narratives, as well as the issue of conceptualization of academic freedom in the rising authoritarian environments across the globe.

Popović obtained her PhD in Comparative Political Sociology at the Doctoral School of Sciences Po Paris and in Balkan Studies at the University of Ljubljana in 2021, under the title “(Post)Yugoslav memories as resistance strategies – Understanding the political significance of Yugonostalgia”, and she is currently preparing a book on the same topic. Her academic research interests remain in the field of Memory Studies, looking into the interplays between memory and political identities, the transmission of memory within families of deserters in post-conflict societies.