A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Mladen Mrdalj

Mladen Mrdalj is a PhD candidate who focuses on research and teaching in Comparative Politics, International Relations and Research Methods. His dissertation investigates significance of external factors in the dynamics of domestic political violence in the Yugoslav civil wars. Mladen’s thesis will analyze inter-connected case studies chosen from the context of the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. The central focus of Mladen’s dissertation is how perceptions of the international system influenced domestic elites’ strategic use of violence. The dissertation will also attempt to deal with more theoretical questions, such as: how domestic actors differentiate between the official and actual positions of international actors, how are they trying to manipulate international actors, and what can we learn about conflict management by answering these questions.

.

In the fall of 2012, Mladen received support from the Humanities Center at Northeastern University to set up a research group to expand upon the study of the international sources of domestic political conflict and violence. Other topics of his academic interests are: civil-military relations, international security, the ideology of Yugoslavism, Balkan politics and trilateral relations between the US, EU and Russia.

Since 2010, Mladen has been actively involved in designing and leading the Dialogue of Civilizations program which introduces Northeastern students to the Western Balkans. In this Balkans Dialogue, students visit important institutions, sites, politicians and activists in the former Yugoslavia, and learn firsthand about ethno-nationalism, post-conflict reconstruction and EU accession. In addition to these activities, Mladen lectures on various aspects of conflict and politics in the post-Yugoslav space.

Mladen earned his LLB and MA in Security Studies from the University of Belgrade, Serbia. He is an alumnus of The Fund for American Studies and Georgetown University’s summer programs in Prague as well as in Washington D.C., where he also interned at the Institute of World Politics. He served in the Serbian Armed Forces’ Guard Brigade. In his spare time Mladen is passionate about his hobbies: genealogy, eating ice cream, basketball and literature. A New England aficionado, Mladen has embraced the charms of Nantucket, apple crisp and resenting New Yorkers.

Source: Northeastern University


SA

 

People Directory

Bishop Jovan (Mladenović)

(1994–2002)

The Divine provision brought the spiritual father of the Monastery Studenica, Bishop Jovan, to continue the work left by the equally most esteemed and humblest spiritual father of the Monastery Hilandar, Bishop Chrysostom.

As an accomplished monastic with the spiritual wealth he attained in the Studenica Monastery, he enriched his flock and clergy. Very soon he gained respect and confidence of his clergy and the faithful.

Bishop Jovan was born in 1950 of father Radojko and mother Stana Mladenović in the village of Dobrace, near Arilje, Serbia. He finished elementary school in his village. At the age of twelve, he went to the Klisura Monasteiy where he remained for one year and then went to the Studenica Monastery. He attended the monastic school in the Ostrog Monastery from 1967 until 1969. He was ordained a hierodeacon in the Studenica Monastery on April 25, 1971. He retained his baptized name of Jovan. Rt. Rev. Vasilije, Bishop of Žiča ordained him as hieromonk in 1973. He graduated from St. Sava Seminary in Belgrade in 1974 and from Theologcial College in Belgrade in 1980.

Read more ...

Publishing

Theological Disambiguations

An Unconventional Handbook of Orthodox Theology

by Rev. Vladan Perisic

Foreword
by Fr John Behr

It is a great pleasure to see this work published, making available some of the most important writings of Fr Vladan Perisic over the last couple of decades available, together in one volume, to an English speaking audience. Fr Vladan’s work is well known in Serbia, and in broader academic and ecumenical circles. But it can now receive the much wider readership that it deserves, and, as a collected volume, its scope, coherence, and significance is sure to receive the recognition it deserves.

The eighteen essays collected here treat diverse topics, from academic theology (and its place in the Church) to questions of life and death, from historically oriented studies, on Sts Ignatius and Gregory Palamas, to contemporary issues, such as human rights and ecology. Each of them is characterized by meticulous scholarship and great insight, clarity of thought and expression.

Read more ...