26/02/2014
Maja Bjelos and Bojan Elek, Researchers at Belgrade Center for Security Policy (BCSP), will be staying at KCSS for a period of two weeks starting from 24 February to 7 March 2014, as a part of Professional Work Exchange for Enhanced Policy Dialogue Program.
This Program is a series of cross-border policy work exchanges of mid-career professionals from a targeted group of think tanks, CSOs, and universities in Kosovo and in Serbia with the aim of enhancing the human resources and knowledge products of host organizations and facilitating the production of multi-perspective policy work in various fields. The overall project is supported by The Balkan Trust for Democracy (BTD) and the main donor is Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Maja Bjelos works at BCSP as a Researcher since 2009. She graduated in International Studies from the Faculty of Political Sciences, University in Belgrade, where she also completed a Master’s programme in International Security. She specialized in gender and security sector reform in Serbia, but she has also researched and published largely on security issues, such as Republic of Serbia security policy, European security and security sector reform in Serbia and representation of national minorities in security sector reform in Serbia. She co-edits the Gender and Security Newsletter.
Bojan Elek works at BCSP as a Researcher since 2013. He graduated from the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, and completed his Master’s degree in International Relations and European Studies at Central European University in Budapest. He is engaged in the activities of the coalition "prEUnup" (monitoring the implementation of policies related to Chapters 23 and 24 of European acquis), as well as in projects in the field of regional security cooperation. During his studies, he spent a year in professional training at George Mason University in the USA, as a scholar of the Open Society Institute. His research interests are EU enlargement, ethnic conflict, peace building and post-conflict societies.
During their stay, the two researchers will engage on drafting a policy paper on The Brussels Agreement in Practice: Integration of Serbian Security Structures into Kosovo Police through desk research and various interviews with relevant stakeholders in Kosovo. The analysis will mainly focus on the analysis of the Agreement’s provisions, briefly addressing the election process and then moving on to do process-tracing of the actual implementation in the field, as well as the aspects of inter-ethnic cooperation, inclusiveness and oversight of this process.
