DEPARTMENT OF SOCIETY, KNOWLEDGE AND POLITICS

Sen. Scientist Dr. Vedran Duančić

Campus-Portal profile | Courses | Research

Research interests (Forschungsschwerpunkte)

I am a historian specializing in modern intellectual history and history of science, with a particular interest in the intersection of science and politics. I have extensively written on the history of geography in Yugoslavia and, wider, East Central Europe in the first half of the 20th century, especially its involvement in nation-building projects. More recently my research interests have shifted to the post-1945, socialist period. I have published on science popularization and the history of biology, including the reception of Lysenko’s ideas, in early socialist Yugoslavia, and I am currently researching the history of scientific and medical cooperation during the Cold War, exploring the history of SMT at the “periphery.”

Research areas / ÖSTAT - Subject areas

Contemporary history
European history
Global history
History of biology
History of geography
History of medicine
History of science

Curriculum Vitae

Professional Experience

2022– Senior Scientist, Institut für Gesellschaft, Wissen und Politik / Department of Society, Knowledge and Politics, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt

2021 Visiting fellowship at the Institute for European Global Studies, University of Basel, Switzerland

2017–2021 Postdoctoral researcher, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb

2017 Short-Term Fellowship for Junior Researchers, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Marburg, Germany

Education

PhD, European University Institute, Florence (2016)

MA, Central European University, Budapest (2011)

BA, University of Zagreb (2009)

Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

Monograph

Duančić, Vedran. Geography and Nationalist Visions of Interwar Yugoslavia. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Duančić, Vedran. Geografija kao sudbina: Geografija i nacionalističke vizije međuratne Jugoslavije. Trans. Mirjana Markovinović. Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2023. [Croatian translation.]

Papers and book chapters

Duančić, Vedran. "The Economic Role of Higher Education, Science, and Technology in Late Socialist Yugoslavia." In "Universities in Times of Crisis and Transformation," ed. Elisa Satjukow and Friedrich Cain, special issue, Baltic Worlds 18, no. 1 (2025): 60–73.

Krizmanics, Réka, and Vedran Duančić. “Introduction: Eager to (Let) Know: KnowledgeProduction and Dissemination in State Socialist Eastern Europe.” European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 30, no. 2 (2023): 143–156.

Duančić, Vedran, Snježana Ivčić, and Ana Vračar. “The Failed Promises of a Brighter Future: TheInstitute of Immunology in Zagreb from a Public Asset to a Privatized Burden.” In Immunization and States: The Politics of Making Vaccines, ed. Stuart Blume and Baptiste Baylac-Paouly, 89–109. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2022.

Duančić, Vedran. “Recent Trends in the History of Science in Croatia.” Centaurus: An International Journal of the History of Science and its Cultural Aspects 63, no. 3 (2021): 553–568.

Duančić, Vedran. “Mapping the Uncertain: Difficulties with Establishing the Ethnic Bordersin Interwar Yugoslavia.” In Boundaries and Borders in Post-Yugoslav Space: A European Experience, ed. Nenad Stefanov and Srdjan Radović, 125–141. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021.

Duančić, Vedran. “Lysenko in Yugoslavia, 1945–1950s: How to de-Stalinize a Stalinist Science.” Journal of the History of Biology 53, no. 1 (2020): 159–194.

Duančić, Vedran. “Prostorne perspektive i izazov ispreplitanja u povijesti znanosti” [Spatial perspective and the challenge ofentanglement in the history of science and knowledge]. Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskogfakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu 52, no. 1 (2020): 37–54.

Duančić, Vedran. “Learning About Politics Through Science: Popular Science in Early Socialist Yugoslavia, 1945–1950.” Historyka: Studia Metodologiczne 49, no. 1 (2019): 55–76.

Duančić, Vedran. “Nationalist Geographies in Interwar Yugoslavia: Manoeuvring Between National and Transnational Spaces.” European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 25, no. 3–4 (2018): 588–611.

Duančić, Vedran. “Geographical Narration of Interwar Yugoslavia: Serbian, Croatian, and Slovenian Perspective, 1918 to the mid-1920s.” East Central Europe 43, no. 1–2 (2016): 188–214.