IR TALKS 15 — From Protest to Politics: The Path of Serbia’s Student Movement to the Student List
Date: 15 October 2026, 17:20—18:50
Language: English
You can join the event online via this link. The talk will be moderated by Eszter Kirs (Department of International Relations, Institute of Global Studies, Corvinus University of Budapest).
The talk examines the emergence, development, and political transformation of the student movement in Serbia, from its origins as a grassroots civic mobilization to its institutionalization through the formation of the Student List as an electoral and political actor. Focusing on the movement’s organizational dynamics, protest repertoire, and interactions with state institutions, political parties, and civil society, the talk explores how a generation of students sought to translate social discontent and demands for accountability, rule of law, and democratic reform into formal political participation. Particular attention is given to the opportunities and challenges of moving from contentious politics to electoral competition, including questions of representation, legitimacy, leadership, coalition-building, and maintaining movement authenticity.
Situating the Serbian case within broader debates on social movements, democratic innovations, and political participation, the speakers reflect on the transformative potential and limitations of student-led political engagement in contemporary democracies.
Nemanja Anđelković is a Research Associate at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade. He completed both his undergraduate and master studies at the same faculty. As a DAAD scholarship holder (2023–2024), he spent part of his doctoral studies at the Institute for Political Science of Goethe University, within the Research Unit on Democratic Innovations, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Nemanja is a certified facilitator of deliberative processes, having completed the Council of Europe’s facilitator training program. His main research interests include democratic theory and democratic innovations, with a focus on democratic experimentalism, deliberative democracy, and agonistic democracy. In addition, he is interested in public policy theories and processes, focusing on research within the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), as well as studies of social mobilization. He is a member of the Nets4Dem 2.0 Horizon project team.
Andrej Ševo is a research assistant at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, and a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Political Sciences. He completed his undergraduate studies in International Relations and a Master’s program in U.S. Studies at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade. As a Chevening Scholar, he earned a Master’s degree in International Relations at University College London (UCL). His thesis on the influence of the American far right in Serbia was awarded as the best work in the field of International Relations in 2022 by the UCL Institute of the Americas. As a researcher, he is a member of the Gender Research Laboratory and the Laboratory for Active Citizenship and Democratic Innovations. His areas of interest include ideology and contemporary political radicalism, social movements, mobilization, and their transnational cooperation.
IR TALKS is a series of guest and roundtable talks organised by the Department of International Relations at Corvinus University to make sense of the world we live in at a time of turbulent international politics.