In honor of Zagorka Golubović, one of the founders of social anthropology in Serbia, the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory has established the annual Zagorka Golubović Early Career Engaged Research Award.

The award will be given for the engaged scientific work of junior researchers: master’s degree students, doctoral students, or those who have obtained their doctoral degree within the past five years. The award is intended for a paper published in the past year in Serbian (Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin) or English in a scientific journal or in an edited volume. Papers which approach regional or wider social problems in an engaged way will be taken into consideration. The papers should be original scientific articles in the social sciences and the humanities. Both empirical and purely theoretical research works are permitted.

The research field of engagement studies developed by the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory defines engagement as a reflective and active attitude of an individual or a group towards certain institutionalized or culturally dominant norms, and as an active attitude towards intervention into the established order.

Submitted papers should:

  • Function as an invitation to others to join the process of reflecting and intervening into social reality – to encourage thinking and acting by focusing on themes and methods that challenge dominant narratives;
  • Contain a critical, that is, an engaged aim – an effort to translate scientific insights into guidelines for acting (i.e., to be operationalized); that is, to offer a thought that wants to be an action;
  • Strive to include a larger number of agents into thinking about and acting against institutional reality which requires a line of argument which is intelligible to a wider audience but which will not lose the rigor and the quality of scientific insights. Thus, the papers should be written using an engaging language.

The best paper, selected by members of the scientific jury, will be re-published in one of the journals of the Institute: Philosophy and Society or The Critique. The author of the winning paper will also be provided with a monetary prize.

Detailed guidelines for application will be provided in a public call for papers which will be announced by the end of May.