Research

The Faculty of Slovene and International Studies of the New University develops scientific research activity within the Institute of Slovene Studies. The Institute of Slovene Studies is entered in the register of research organizations at the Public Agency for Research of the Republic of Slovenia (ARRS). In accordance with the membership of the Faculty in the New University, the Institute also cooperates with the Scientific Research Centre of the New University.

The aim of the research work of the Institute of Slovene Studies is, in particular, to take care of the fundamental and applied development of the scientific fields of the Slovene studies. In recent years, the activities of the institute have been focused on the successful acquisition and implementation of the basic ARRS project, more intensive cooperation between the institute and the faculty, and the publication of the achieved results in the form of scientific articles and books.

In the academic year 2024/25, the Institute has four (4) researchers registered with the ARRS, who work in the field of Slovene studies and represent the interdisciplinary core of the scientific research work of the Institute:

• dr. Tomaž Ivešič, no. 54926 , field of activity: history.
• dr. Ignacija Fridl Jarc, no. 22236, field of activity: philosophy.
• dr. Gorazd Justinek, No. r. 35652, field of activity: economics.
• dr. Renato Podberšič, No. r. 30274, field of activity: historiography.
• dr. Dejan Valentinčič, No. r. 36485, field of activity: law.

Basic information about the Institute of Slovene Studies:

• Registration number: 3270-001 – from ARRS records
• Research organization: Nova University, Faculty of Slovenian and International Studies
• Research group – research activity: 5:00 a.m. Social studies, 6:00 a.m. Humanities
• Head of the research group: Dr. Dejan Valentinčič
• ARRS projects: A culture of remembering the building blocks of the Slovenian nation and country

Slovenian economic and business presence in Brazil and Argentina: a complete overview of existing structures and their expectations as a basis for further connections with each other and with the motherland”

Project duration: 1. 9. 2025 – 31.8.2027

Project description: The target research project, announced by the Office of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia for Slovenians Abroad and Worldwide and ARIS, is to conduct a comprehensive census of Slovenian businesspeople operating in Argentina and Brazil, prepare a comprehensive concept for further such research (the economic aspect is the least researched in the context of the census of Slovenian emigration) and, based on this, prepare a model for the internationalization of Slovenian companies through connections with the economic diaspora.

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Universities under Pressure: Party, Personnel, and Dissent in Socialist Slovenia

Project duration: Jan–Dec 2026

Project description: The project explores how universities under socialism managed political pressures and how these influenced the careers of professors and students. It uses primarily written sources (personnel, minutes, decisions), supplemented by focused interviews, to measure the effects of formal rules and informal practices (patronage, “gatekeeping”). The results include a panel in Maribor, a book with ~350 characterizations of non-partisan academics (1946–1951), and open publication of data, contributing to the debate on academic freedom.

More information about the project is available at the link: Universities under pressure: party, personnel, and dissent in Socialist Slovenia • European University Institute

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The Perceptions of Ethnic Identities and Stereotyping in the Early Modern Era between the Alps and the Adriatic

Project duration: 1. 3.  2026 – 1. 3. 2029

Project description: The Perceptions of Ethnic Identities and Stereotyping in the Early Modern Era between the Alps and the Adriatic seeks to illuminate the largely unexplored role that ethnic stereotypes played in the formation and consolidation of nation-states between 1492 and 1848. With a particular focus on the Habsburg lands between Venice and the Pannonian Basin, the project aims to examine the convergences and divergences in how specific ethnicities were perceived both internally and externally. The selection of these lands is not incidental; it is because it was an ethnically mixed area. Moreover, as a smaller ethnic group without a state, the Slovene-speaking people provide a distinctive case for examining ethnic stereotyping. Consequently, this project also seeks to explore the contrast in ethnic stereotyping between early modern peoples with states and peoples without states.

On February 14, 2023, the New university received recognition from the European Commission for compliance of the Human Resources Strategy for Researchers (HRS4R) with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers.

At the same time, New University also obtained permission to use the “HR Excellence in Research” logo, which visually symbolizes these efforts.

The HR Excellence in Research award publicly recognizes research institutions that have made progress in aligning their HR policy with the principles defined in the “Charter and Code.” Institutions that have been granted the right to use the logo are underlining their commitment to implementing fair and transparent recruitment and evaluation processes for researchers.

The New university thereby contributes to the efforts of the European Commission in the creation of a common research area, a single labor market for researchers, mobility within it, the attractiveness of the careers that this profession enables, more attractive working conditions, the development of various skills and abilities of researchers, and the most stable social security.

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Euraxess is a network of information centers that operate throughout Europe and help researchers who want to continue their careers or get additional training in another country.

Euraxess Slovenia

Euraxess Europe

The national web portal Euraxess Slovenia contains current information on job offers and scholarships abroad and legal, administrative, and practical information on working and living abroad. In addition, research organizations can advertise vacancies and search for suitable candidates on the European portal, and researchers can also register in the searcher database.

Euraxess consists of four content sections:

• Euraxess Jobs: information on employment opportunities;
• Euraxess Services: help with moving abroad with information on visas, work permits, accommodation, legal status, social transfers, and health insurance;
• Euraxess Rights: information on the rights in accordance with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Employment of Researchers and the list of institutions that have already signed them;
• Euraxess Links: a tool for connecting European researchers abroad. Euraxess Links China, India, Japan, USA, and Singapore are already operating.

Project Slovenian Intellectual History in the Light of Contemporary Theories of Religion: From the Separation of Spirits and Cultural Struggle to the Communist Revolution – ARRS Basic Research Project (J6-3140)

Duration of the project: 1. 10. 2021―30. 9. 2024

Project description: Regarding the time frame of the project, the focus will be from the second half of the 19th century, or rather from “Machnič’s” separation of spirits, to the beginning of the communist revolution during World War II. This does not mean that our research will not reach beyond this time frame, both towards the previous time and the period after that. This is not even possible. However, the main focus is on this period. In the project, we will apply contemporary theories of religion, especially those that are useful from the perspective of secularization, modernization, violence, understanding culture, cultural struggle and ideological conflict. It is worth mentioning here, among others, Charles Taylor, René Girard, Jan Assmann, as well as Russian philosophical and theological thinkers. An important segment of our research will touch on violence and cultural struggle. The next inevitable topic is the question of truth and authority (revelation and the Church), including their phenomenological, hermeneutical and ideological or social aspects (application of the first two to the last two). This problem is closely related to the problem of nihilism, which was brought to the Slovenian space by freethinking, which penetrated it from abroad. From the perspective of nihilism, we will shed light on both the crisis of Slovenian freethinking, communism, and the crisis of traditional Catholicism, from which the situation increasingly demanded new answers that would be in line with the signs of the times. An important part of our project will be the investigation of the collision between freethinking and traditional or radical Catholicism. The next line of research will be the illumination of the dynamics of the formation of a nation, which we schematically capture with the triad “people-people-nation”. We will shed light on the frictions caused by the formation of the Slovenian nation and the ideology of popularism, which was used by both the Catholic and communist sides. In this way, we will try to shed light on the ideological conflict that freethinking, modernization, and secularization introduced into the Slovenian space. The result of the aforementioned factors was a separation of minds. The ideological conflict culminated in the course of World War II with the communist revolution and the conflict between Catholics and communists. The project will thus have two levels, which we will try to connect as organically as possible: a more general theoretical level and a specific Slovenian “story”, the research of which will give the project empirical content. In this way, we will achieve two things: on the one hand, in the project with the application, we will verify generally established theories of religion and culture, and on the other hand, we will use these theories to shed light on Slovenian intellectual history in a way that has not been systematically done in an interdisciplinary and coordinated research project so far. We will also research the topic comparatively, in a broader context (Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, etc.). Therefore, we will attract competent researchers from the aforementioned countries. The project is a novelty on a global scale, as no one has done anything similar in a systematic way before. The project is important from the perspective of national and European interest, as understanding ideological conflicts in the past is also crucial for understanding such frictions and conflicts in the present and, last but not least, for resolving them. The project is not only important for the fields of theology, religious studies, history and cultural studies, but also for other fields of the humanities and social sciences. The call emphasizes cultural heritage and European significance: the project undoubtedly has both dimensions.

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The Building Blocks of Slovenian Statehood Project: Encyclopedia of Slovenia’s Independence and Statehood

TYPE OF DEVELOPMENT PROJECT:

Research and development, national project of the Slovenian Agency for Research and Development.

DESCRIPTION OF DEVELOPMENT PROJECT:

In the last 20 years, the phenomenon of ethnicity, modern nation, nationalism and ethnic identity has been intensively researched in the field of social sciences and humanities. Despite the fact that Slovenian historians follow research trends, there has still been no systematic research on ethnicity and the development of the nation/state in Slovenia. Also, theoretical findings in the field of ethnic studies and nationalism are not sufficiently reflected in syntheses of the history of Slovenians. The originality of the project lies in the fact that, with the help of complex analysis and interdisciplinary humanities and social sciences methodological starting points, we will (re)interpret the corpus of national memory as it appears in texts of national history, in literature, folk literature, and the media, which represent the foundations of national identity. For this purpose, a special Encyclopedia of Independence and Statehood of Slovenia will be produced.

The purpose of the proposed project is to study the process of Slovenian state formation and nation-building, with an emphasis on the final phase of this process, when in the 1980s and 1990s, Slovenians succeeded in forming their own state in a long-term process. The formation of a modern nation can be observed within the framework of the modern bourgeois movement, which, like that in Europe, has been developing since the 18th century. It took shape as a political, economic and cultural movement.

The research focuses on the interdisciplinary study of various aspects (historical, cultural, anthropological, legal) of the formation of Slovenian ethnic and national identity. The current knowledge in this area needs to be illuminated and (re)interpreted with modern theoretical and methodological approaches that address the formation of ethnic identities and national states, the so-called nation building process. Being aware that history, national identity and culture are formed retrogradely through interpretation in the contemporary context of the located subject, we proceed from the hypothesis that symbols, myths, images, memories and communications are decisive for the formation of the identity of both communities and individuals, therefore special attention will be paid to researching their representation and construction in terms of their integrative role in connecting communities and constructing “historical truth”, especially on the examples of cultural products (art, literature, historiographical works, popular culture, mass media, advertising, etc.).

Due to the heterogeneity of culture, language and society, the Slovenian space in the 19th and 20th centuries was often a place of conflictual confrontations between the ethnic groups living here, therefore in the research we will pay special attention to the relationship between national identity and the “other” in terms of relationships that shape, consolidate, challenge or are in any way essential for the consolidation of identity, especially national. In doing so, we will build on the hypothesis that Slovenian ethnicity was not built solely essentially due to historical-political and socio-economic phenomena, but also in relations to the “other”.

Special attention will be paid to the myth of rebellion, which appears as a conflict in relation to tradition and the previously established concept of national identity, but in our opinion plays a central role in the process of forming Slovenian national consciousness and statehood in Slovenian national historiography and collective memory.

Through thematic analysis, we will identify representations of historical myths that play a key role in the formation of community identity (the myth of sui generis, ante murales, antiquity, rebellion and the myth of common suffering) and study them with a comparative interdisciplinary approach through the most important milestones of Slovenian collective memory, all of which have a rebellious character.

The originality of the project lies in the fact that, with the help of complex analysis and interdisciplinary humanities and social science methodological starting points, we will critically (re)interpret the corpus of Slovenian national cultural remembrance, as reflected in texts of national history, literature, folk literature, art, rituals, myths, media, etc., and thus explore the fundamental characteristics of Slovenian national cultural remembrance in five selected pivotal transitional historical periods in the last quarter of a millennium, which form the corpus on which the construction of the Slovenian nation and the state of Slovenia is based.

The main goal of the research project is the preparation of original research and a glossary and keywords for the Encyclopedia of Slovenian Self-Determination and Independence.

The national consortium of partners consists of the following organizations: University of Maribor; Faculty of Arts; Nova University, Faculty of European Law; Nova University, Faculty of Slovenian and International Studies; Institute for Research, Development and Strategies of Society, Culture and Environment, Koper; Nova Revija Institute, Department of Humanities, Ljubljana.