Bojan Baća is a political and cultural sociologist whose research primarily focuses on civil society, social movements, and contentious politics. He obtained his PhD from York University in 2019 and has since held postdoctoral positions at the University of Graz, Charles University, and Heidelberg University. His most recent postdoctoral fellowship was at the University of Gothenburg as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow (2021–2023). In addition, he has also held junior research fellowships at the University of Rijeka, New Europe College, and Akademie Schloss Solitude. He is currently a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Montenegro, and a Seed Money Fellow at the Research Platform for the Study of Transformations and Eastern Europe, University of Vienna.

His research has appeared in various peer-reviewed publications, such as Sociology, Antipode, International Political Sociology, Political Geography, Europe-Asia Studies, and Theory, Culture & Society (forthcoming), among others. Over recent years, he has garnered several research awards recognizing his contributions to the study of civil society and social movements in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe, including the 2022 Routledge Area Studies Interdisciplinarity Award, the 2022 Zagorka Golubović Engaged Research Award, and the 2020 Danubius Young Scientist Award. His professional background includes more than a decade of experience in the non-governmental sector, where he worked as a policy analyst and consultant. He is currently a member of the Balkans in Europe Policy Advisory Group (BiEPAG).

The main goal of his six-month Seed Money Fellowship is to prepare a grant application focused on examining similarities and divergences in meaning-making practices and knowledge-production processes involved in conspiracy theorizing in the post-Yugoslav region during two significant historical events: the dissolution of the communist bloc in 1989 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Through a mixed-method approach, the proposed project will seek to offer a comprehensive account of the continuities in and transformations of conspiracy theories during postsocialist transformation.

Selected publications:

• Bojan Baća (2023) “Three Stages of Civil Society Development in the Global East: Lessons from Montenegro, 1989–2020”, Political Geography, 1–11. DOI: 10.1016/j.polgeo.2023.103005
• Bojan Baća (2023) “Enacting Resistance, Performing Citizenship: Trajectories of Political Subjectification in the Post-Democratic Condition”, Sociology 57(1): 175–193.
• Bojan Baća (2022) “Practice Theory and Postsocialist Civil Society: Toward a New Analytical Framework”, International Political Sociology 16(1): 1–21.
• Bojan Baća & Kenneth Morrison (2022) “Dependence, Independence, Interdependence: Montenegro’s Foreign Policy from 1991 to 2020”, in A New Eastern Question? Great Powers and the Post-Yugoslav States, edited by Soeren Keil and Bernhard Stahl. Stuttgart: Ibidem and New York: Columbia University Press. 317–343.
• Bojan Baća (2021) “‘Demanding What is Not Theirs to Demand’: Rebellious Students in Post-Socialist Montenegro”, in When Students Protest: Universities in the Global North, edited by Judith Bessant, Analicia Mejia Mesinas and Sarah Pickard. London: Rowman and Littlefield. 141–158.
• Bojan Baća (2020) “Everyday Acts of Citizenship: Infrapolitical Resistance and its Political Consequences in the Age of Social Media”, in Resistances: Between Theories and the Field, edited by Sarah Murru and Abel Polese. London: Rowman and Littlefield. 37–59.
• Bojan Baća (2018) “Forging Civic Bonds ‘From Below’: Montenegrin Activist Youth between Ethnonational Disidentification and Political Subjectivation”, in Changing Youth Values in Southeast Europe: Beyond Ethnicity, edited by Tamara P. Trošt and Danilo Mandić. London: Routledge. 127–147.
• Bojan Baća (2017) “The Student’s Two Bodies: Civic Engagement and Political Becoming in the Post-Socialist Space”, Antipode 49(5): 1125–1144.
• Bojan Baća (2017) “‘We Are All Beranselo’: Political Subjectivation as an Unintended Consequence of Activist Citizenship”, Europe-Asia Studies 69(9): 1430–1454.
• Bojan Baća (2017) “Civil Society Against the Party-State? The Curious Case of Social Movements in Montenegro”, in The Democratic Potential of Emerging Social Movements in Southeastern Europe, edited by Jasmin Mujanović. Sarajevo: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. 33–39.