As part of the Prizma / IMAGINATION project (“Imagining the Nation: Serbian National Narratives in Contestation (20th–21st Centuries)”), implemented at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade (2024–2027) with financial support from the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, a lecture series is being organized in which the project’s researchers present their findings and open a discussion on the ways national narratives are formed, contested, and transformed over the long durée of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This lecture offers an overview of the different ways in which the nation has been theorized in Serbian scholarly production across the socialist period, the 1990s, and the era after 2000. It introduces the major theoretical approaches—from modernist and Marxist perspectives, through perennialist and ethno-symbolist frameworks, to interactionist and postmodern interpretations. The lecture demonstrates how the same concept of the nation can be conceptualized in multiple, often competing ways within the academic field. Its aim is to provide the audience with a clear insight into the theoretical diversity and internal tensions that structure scholarly debates on the nation in Serbia, as well as into the ways dominant approaches have shifted over time.

Miloš Janković is a Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, and a doctoral student in Political Science at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade. His research interests lie in the philosophy and sociology of education, with a particular emphasis on critical pedagogy.

Damir Zejnulahović is a Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, and a doctoral student in Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. His research interests include political sociology, the sociology of knowledge, historical sociology, and the analysis and critique of ideologies.