For me, the decision was relatively simple. I wasn’t done with the knowledge I had gained during my bachelor’s studies. Several of the projects I was working on felt unfinished, and I believed they had a future beyond the university context.
The research I was most deeply involved in focused on Yugoslavia and the Balkan region. Coming from the Balkans is not just a geographical fact for me—it shapes how I think, work, and create. It carries a complex history of fragmentation, and resilience, but also a strong sense of shared culture, shared contradictions, and collective memory. This background influences the questions I ask and the themes I repeatedly return to in my work.
My bachelor’s thesis is closely connected to LGBTQ+ identities and rights, and to how these are understood and lived in the Balkans and then Yugoslavia. I was interested in the tension between visibility and safety, progress and backlash, and in how legal rights, social acceptance, and everyday realities often do not move at the same pace. Looking at the Yugoslav past alongside the current political and cultural climate helped me understand how ideas of freedom, community, and solidarity have shifted over time.
Continuing with a master’s degree felt like a natural next step to deepen this research. It offered the space to further explore questions of identity, belonging, and resistance, and to critically examine how personal experience can become a political and artistic position. For me, staying in academia was not about postponing “real life,” but about giving these topics the time, care, and complexity they require.
