Queer Balkans – the team

Before we begin publishing our posts and our findings we wanted to let you know who we are, what our teams looks like and what we have been doing around here for the past year. So this will just be a quick rundown of who we are, what our specialties are, and what we have done so far academically.

Nada
Born and raised in beautiful Bavaria in the south of Germany, Nada chose to follow her Croatian-Bosnian background by studying Slavistics in Bamberg, Germany and Zadar, Croatia. She pursued a more political path by moving to Berlin to start her Master’s in Eastern European Studies where she joined Queer Balkans. In the project Nada mostly does the academic work of writing reports and analysis of the materials we gathered. She also represents the project on a legal level by being the facilitator of our crowdfunding initiatives. In her free time, you’ll find her by a book or improving her fitness skills. She speaks German, English, Croatian and Russian.

Ola
Aleksandra, or as we all call her Ola, was born in the port city of Gdańsk, Poland. At the age of 10, she moved to Hamburg where she graduated from Slavic Studies at the University of Hamburg, moving to Berlin to continue with Eastern European Studies. Fluent in Polish, German and English, she also speaks Russian and has studied BCMS following her interest in the region. She joined Queer Balkans and focuses on culture and identity within the project, she filmed interviews as the second camera and did a substantial amount of work for the academic part. A team player most of all, she supports everyone in every single department and always offers her help. Her biggest passion is music, so you’ll never see her without her headphones, whether they’re playing Beethoven or Queen B.

Damyana
From the beautiful valley of the Vitosha mountain, Damyana’s story begins in the capital of Bulgaria. She introduces herself as not being a fan of black and white worldviews and illusory dichotmies and exclusions. She likes colours, layers, nuances, contradictions, add-ons and bonuses. She moved to Germany after school to study Islamic Studies at the University of Heidelberg and moved to Berlin to continue said studies in a Master’s Degree. She joined Queer Balkans as the only one not studying Eastern European studies but with a passion for the Balkans and an expert on the Islamic world in the Balkans. She speaks Bulgarian, Serbian, English and German. In the project her charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent put her in the spot for leading the interviews and being in charge of communication and content in terms of what we will talk about, as well as pitching script ideas.

Hannah
Half-English, half-German and 100% European, Hannah was born in the capital of Bavaria. She grew up in Munich, New York and again in Munich and pursued a degree in European Law in Maastricht, in the Netherland, and Uppsala, Sweden. After her degree she worked for the European Union in Brussels for three years where it was her mission to put the word “queer” in her agenda wherever she could and fight for LGBTI rights on a European level. Her interest in the lesser known half of Europe and EU-accession lead her to Berlin to study Eastern European Studies where she joined Queer Balkans. Hannah was in charge of the first camera, and is currently in charge of editing and social media. She speaks English, German, French, Dutch and Russian, and in her free time you’ll find her making the world a better place.

Stefan
A full-on east European, Stefan was born in Prague, Czech Republic, and raised by Serbian parents with Croatian and Bosnian roots. As with all things Ex-Yu: it’s complicated. After growing up in Prague, Stefan moved to Berlin, Germany in order to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Sociology in nearby Potsdam, and later a Master’s degree in Eastern European Studies, where he meets the rest of the crew interested in queer topics in the Balkans, a subject matter close to his personal experience. Since then, Stefan is in charge of project coordination, administration, finances and communication in Serbian. Beside BCSM, he speaks Czech, German, English, French and Russian. In his free time, you will find Stefan writing on his personal blog, bringing attention to various social, political and personal issues – being queer and from the Balkans, these topics can overlap more often than not.

So there you have it, that’s our diverse team, full of colours and rainbows. Over the next few months, we will be bringing you articles on topics from the region and hope to get a film ready by the end of the year, so, stay tuned!

the Queer Balkans team

Queer Balkans – an Introduction

Hello there, welcome to our blog! You may have stumbled upon this on the interested because you felt like researching the Balkans, a specific country in that region and/or the LGBTI community. If you think you’re in the right place, allow us to introduce ourselves: Welcome to the Queer Balkans blog!

Our project started a little over a year ago in December 2018 at the Eastern European Institute of the Free University of Berlin. We, a group of five students, set out on a mission to create a documentary series as part of our university project. We wanted to investigate the specific problems that plague the LGBTI community in the Balkans in their day to day lives, and how their lives look like in their circumstances. Our main objective was always to portray the situation as accurately as possible without being clouded by prejudice or information from outside.

So far, our project submitted the final report of our findings to our university and have presented these at exhibitions and panels. While the future of the film is still very much unsure, our findings will, for now, live on this blog.

Our blog will be in English, mainly because not everyone in our team speaks a Balkan language, but also because in no way do we see ourselves as an authority to deliver accurate local content in the local language. There are far better resources provided to locals by their respective organisations. There is no inherent lack of accurate representation of the Balkan LGBTI community, it just isn’t commonly available in English. The resources that are available are mostly distorted in one way or another from reality.

Furthermore, this blog will practice political neutrality. Obviously, the fight for LGBTI rights is inherently political, but the interviews we led were focused on the lives of the queer community and their day to day realities. We are also not a political commentary because we do not have the same view on politics as the people who live under their respective governments and their policies. Rest assured that we firmly believe in same-sex marriage, adoption, trans rights and every other form of equal rights for the queer community, the abstention will mostly focus on the delicate regional disputes that are best left to local experts.

When someones says “the Balkans” everyone means something different, so here is what it means to us: The Balkans as a geographic definition is everything south of the Sava-Danube river line, however, our project research only covered the former Yugoslavia, Albania and Bulgaria, and filming for our documentary only took place in Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia. This is due to the budget constrains of a student project. Similarly, this blog will go in that direction.

So what’s next? In the coming weeks you’ll find short articles, or blog posts, on various topics that have been covered during our work in 2019, many of which have been collecting dust on our shelves. Furthermore, we hope to give up to date insight on certain situations in the Balkans and keep people updated on the current state of things. Most importantly, we hope to be an English-speaking outlet that will deliver queer Balkan topics with the respect and consideration they deserve. This post is just the start.

Your Queer Balkans team