Two weeks ago, TAPRI had the honor to host Dr. Sladjana Lazic, Asst. Professor of Peace & Conflict Studies from the University of Innsbruck, for a week-long visit. Dr. Lazic contributed by speaking at one of our TAPRI seminars, a doctoral seminar, and in a master’s course lecture.
In the TAPRI seminar Dr. Lazic gave a presentation on the topic of “Resisting the disciplining power and violence of academia/academic peace studies”. In the presentation she discussed the violence within peace studies, a field which traditionally looks at the violence outside but has for a long time ignored structural violence inside the academic field. Dr. Lazic brought up questions such as who funds the research and how does it affect what is being researched, and the need to challenge the positionality of individual researchers.
Dr. Lazic’s talk during the Doctoral Seminar, “Praxical Reflexivity & Working as a Collective In & Out of Academia”, examined how reflexivity can serve as a collective and relational practice to resist academic extractivism. Reflexivity was presented not as a checklist but as an iterative process of situating oneself in power relations, fostering accountability, and centering care and relationships in knowledge production, highlighting both the challenges and possibilities of feminist and decolonial approaches within and beyond academia.
On Thursday Dr. Lazic’s lecture for the master’s students discussed transitional and transformative justice, comparing the institutionalized transitional justice processes, which often involve establishments such as truth commissions and focus on civil and political rights, with the transformative justice where the focus is on long-term socioeconomic rights and inequality.
Thank you, Dr. Lazic, for joining us and contributing with your expertise to the whole TAPRI community, from staff to students. It was a pleasure to have you here.