Over the weekend at the 2023 Serious Games and World Politics Summer Seminar in Mokra Gora, Serbia, PhD students from University of Belgrade and The Ohio State University presented their work-in-progress to panels of their peers, along with an interdisciplinary group of faculty from both institutions as well as from University of Glasgow and the U.S. Naval War College.

One of the major objectives of the seminar was to create cohorts of PhD students and create a space to discuss each other’s doctoral projects. Topics presented include everyday peace and masculinity, the temporal politics of peace settlements, and the construction of international politics. 

Seminar participants were also able to explore the region, including a trip to Visegrad in nearby Bosnia and Herzogovina. The five-day event enabled these future teachers and scholars to build a sense of intellectual and professional community and to learn more about the Western Balkans. Ideas for collaborative work in future are already percolating. Ohio State participants included faculty Angela Brintlinger, Matthew Birkhold, Jennifer Mitzen, Dorothy Noyes and Ying Zhang and graduate students Evan DeCarlo, Brian Finch, Zhiqin Gao, Laurie Georges, Kara Hooser, Minseon Ku and Kaveri Sarkar.

Serious Games and World Politics took place within the framework of the Serbian Educational Alliance, a U.S. State Department-funded university partnership program between the Center for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies at The Ohio State University and the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Belgrade. The summer seminar was co-funded by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies at The Ohio State University.