About Petar

Petar Bojanić is a Full Professor of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade and Director of the Center for Advanced Studies, University of Rijeka. He is also a President of the Institute for Democratic Engagement Southeast Europe based in Belgrade.

Petar’s research on war, ethics of war, violence and its cessation, on Jewish political theory has been profoundly enriched by his consideration of institutions and counter-institutions, for engaged and (negative) social acts, as well as by the theory of the architectural concept and project.

Petar studied philosophy at the University of Belgrade and at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris under the supervision of Miladin Životić and Jacques Derrida. He obtained his PhD at Paris X (Nanterre), with the thesis topic “La guerre (dernière) et l’institution de la philosophie” [(Last) War and the Institution of Philosophy], defending it to a committee comprising Étienne Balibar, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Derrida, and Gérard Bensussan. He has been visiting professor at many universities around the world, such as Cornell, Aberdeen, Yekaterinburg, London, Roma, and others. Currently he is a visiting professor in Turin and Rijeka.

Petar has held scholarships for a number of foundations and has headed numerous research projects. In the last six years, he was the principal fellow of a project on the Ethics of War in the eastern European tradition and in Orthodox Christianity at the University of Yekaterinburg, funded by the Russian Science Foundation. Previously, he was a fellow at the Käte-Hamburger Kolleg, “Recht asl Kultur” (Bonn). He held two mandates as the Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade, from 2010 until 2019.

Petar is currently the co-editor of Khorein: a journal for architecture and philosophy. He has published some ten books, which have been translated into several languages, and has edited over fifty books and journals. His recent publications include In-Statuere. Figures of Institutional Building (Frankfurt am Main, Vittorio Klostermann, 2022); Ethics of War in Orthodox Christian Countries (Saint Petersburg, Vladimir Dal, 2022); Provocatio. Vocativo Ius Rivoluzione (Milano – Udine, Mimesis Edizioni, 2021); Violence and Messianism. Jewish Philosophy and the Great Conflicts of the 20 th Century (London – New York, Routledge, 2018) (translated into eight languages); and Institutions in Action. The Nature and the Role of Institutions in the Real World, (with T. Andina) (Berlin, Springer, 2020); “What Is the Critique of Violence Now?” (with P. Fenves & M. Ty), Critical Times, Durham, NC, Vol. 2, n. 2, 2019.

Currently, he is preparing a book on the concept of the project and projective acts, as well as a book on the touch, gesture, and strike.