Robert Dopchie

Robert Dopchie is a research fellow at the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.–FNRS) and a doctoral researcher at the University of Liège (Belgium). His PhD dissertation, Between Empowerment and Domination: The EU’s Civil Society Engagement in Candidate Countries, examines the European Union’s efforts to strengthen civil society organizations in the Western Balkans—particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina—through the lenses of postcolonial and post-development theories. The research highlights the power dynamics between the EU, Bosnian authorities, and local civil society organizations.

He is the author of several scientific publications, including an article in the European Foreign Affairs Review (2024) and a book chapter published with Palgrave Macmillan (2025).

Brownbag: Between Empowerment and Domination: The EU’s Civil Society Engagement in Candidate Countries

Irina Milutinović

Dr. Irina Milutinović is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade, Serbia. She obtained a PhD degree from the Faculty of Political Sciences, University in Belgrade (2012) and her scholarly expertise spans Media Studies, European Studies, and Democracy Studies. For the past five years, Dr Milutinović has been an external collaborator of the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom (European University Institute) in Florence, Italy. She leads a country team for Serbia on the “Monitoring Media Pluralism in the digital era” (MPM) project. 

She mostly deals with issues of media freedom, media pluralism, democratic transitions, and European integration, situating her work at the core of contemporary debates on institutional resilience and democratic accountability. She is the author of four monographs and more than fifty peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and policy analyses, disseminated across diverse academic and policy venues in the United Kingdom, United States, Italy, Poland, Czechia, Bulgaria, Serbia. Her current research agenda is oriented toward the study of media policies and practices amid democratic backsliding in Serbia and in contemporary Europe. 

Fanni Elek

Fanni Elek is a doctoral researcher and PhD Candidate at Andrássy University Budapest. Her compilation dissertation explores the interplay between EU enlargement policy and the influence of authoritarian external actors in Serbia. Her research focuses on how autocracy promotion by these actors impact both EU policy and domestic democratic development in Serbia. She holds a BA in International Relations from the University of Szeged and an MA in International Relations - European Studies from Andrássy University Budapest. 

During her Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, she is finalizing two peer-reviewed articles: one on the EU’s shift from democracy to stability promotion in Serbia, and another on China's influence in the region through the Belt and Road Initiative. Her research combines case study methodology with theories of democracy and autocracy promotion, contributing to the literature on EU external governance and political developments in the Western Balkans.

Ana Kladnik

Ana Kladnik received her PhD in history from the University of Ljubljana, after being a PhD researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History in Prague. She then worked at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (ZZF) in Potsdam, at the University of Dresden and at the Institute for Contemporary History in Ljubljana. Since 2023, she has been a MSCA Fellow at the University of Graz (2023-25) and University of Maribor (2025-26). She works on modern European history (particularly East Central Europe), political and social transformation processes of the 19th–21st centuries, socialism, democratisation, nationalism, and the history of civil society. She edited Visions and Practices of Democracy in Socialist and Post-Colonial States (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2025) and Volunteering and Voluntary Associations in Post-Yugoslav States (Comparative Southeast European Studies, 2020).