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Dr Ljubica Spaskovska

Lecturer in European History

6499

01392 726499

My research interests are in the history of South East Europe, the political and socio-cultural history of internationalism, including development, nonalignment, decolonisation and histories of generations, while providing important new perspectives on the (re) making of anti-imperial Europe and approaches to European-Global South relations. My recent research has been published in the Journal of World History, Contemporary European History, Labor History and Nationalities Papers. 

My first monograph The Last Yugoslav Generation: the Rethinking of Youth Politics and Cultures in Late Socialism (Manchester University Press) was published in April 2017. A paperback edition came out in August 2019.

1989. A Global History of Eastern Europe, co-written with my colleagues James Mark, Tobias Rupprecht and Bogdan Iacob to co-incide with the thirtieth anniversary of the 1989 revolutions, was published by Cambridge University Press in September 2019.

Research interests

Ongoing book projects:

Subaltern Globalists: South-Eastern Europe and 20th-century Internationalism

The complex interaction of nationalism and internationalism could be said to have defined the 20th century - from the “Wilsonian moment” to 1989. South-Eastern Europe exemplifies the mutually constitutive nature of these “faithfully twinned ideologies”. This research makes sense of that complex link and of the interconnected nature of the different visions and approaches to the "international", in a region often portrayed as a European post-imperial periphery synonymous with conflict and a buffer zone between the Cold War superpowers. The monograph recovers the region's critical role in 20th-century histories of internationalism and global governance.

Grants and funded research:

In 2022 I was awarded a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant for a project entitled The Urban Internationale: The United Nations and Urban Development 1945-1980. The research will combine an institutional history with a life-story / biographical history approach in order to understand how international organisations and transnational networks of architects, planners and international civil servants conceptualised cities as powerful embodiments of the welfare state. It will examine the ways ideas and templates of post-war urban development circulated, were exported and received or resisted across the Cold War and the North-South divides between 1945 and 1980. The output will be a journal article.

Research collaborations

"Care and Intimacies in Irregular Warfare" (special issue): AHRC project Colonial and transnational intimacies: Medical humanitarianism in the French external resistance (1940-1945) (University of Manchester) and SNSF project La Croix-Face à l'étoile rouge: humanitaire et communisme au XXe siècle (University of Fribourg).

External impact and engagement

Work with museums:

Other:

  • External expert on the intergovernmental Macedonian-Bulgarian Expert Commission on Educational and Historical Issues. The Commission follows in the footsteps of many other similar bodies in Europe (most notably the German-French textbook commission) that sought to 'depolarise the past' and revise historical textbooks in order to overcome mistrust and improve history education.

Contribution to discipline

Media

 

Teaching

I am committed to research and inquiry-led teaching and to working with my students as co-producers of knowledge to create a collaborative and inclusive educational experience.

I endeavour to embed multiperspectivity in all of the modules I teach. I believe analysing historical events from multiple perspectives helps students develop historical understanding to construct their own historical knowledge. 

Awards:

2020 Teaching Awards, University of Exeter Student Guild: Winner in the "Inspirational Teaching" category, College of Humanities.

Modules taught

Biography

I received a Doctorate in History from the University of Exeter in 2014. I was a post-doctoral research fellow on the Leverhulme-funded project 1989 after 1989: rethinking the fall of state socialism in a global perspective at Exeter led by Professor James Mark before being appointed to a permanent lectureship in 2019. I was also part of the research team on the University of Edinburgh based ERC project "Europeanisation of citizenship in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia" (CITSEE).

I received an MA in History with Distinction from the Central European University in 2009 and an MA in Democracy and Human Rights in South East Europe from the Universities of Bologna and Sarajevo in 2007. I did my undergraduate studies in North Macedonia and at Duke University in the U.S. and I had previsouly worked as a project assistant at the Macedonain Academy of Sciences and Arts, in the civil society sectors in Macedonia and in Kosovo and as a literary translator from French.   

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