Name and Surname
Anastas Vangeli
Affiliation
University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business
Contact email
anastas.vangeli@ef.uni-lj.si
Short Biography
Anastas Vangeli is Assistant Professor at the University of Ljubljana, School of Economics and Business. He is Associate Editor of Asia Europe Journal and co-editor of Yugoslavia and China: Histories, Legacies, Afterlives (Routledge, 2025), and currently leads an international project on how actors in the semi-periphery think about and position themselves in the transition to electric vehicles. His research examines the diffusion of ideas and imagined futures, focusing on how China’s global rise, Western and non-Western responses, and new technologies shape development imaginaries and forms of political, economic, and civic agency.
Research abstract
This study develops a framework for understanding how Balkan Gen Z imagine the future and exercise agency under conditions of semi-peripheral uncertainty. Rather than approaching youth through apathy or exit, the study contemplates a set of ideational dimensions that structure everyday dilemmas around mobility, work, time, knowledge, ecology, and geopolitics. Working with interpretive process tracing, the study reconstructs how shifts in material conditions are translated into orientations and practices through media environments, institutional encounters, and peer-level sense-making. The intended contribution is establishing a conceptual framework for future empirical research and policy engagement on youth, ideas, and futures in the Balkans.