Authors

Faruk Bešić

Born  in Berlin in 1994, the author studied German philology and biology at Freie Universität Berlin, completing a master’s thesis entitled Tabubruch durch Andeutungen – Fakten und Fiktion in Herta Müllers “Atemschaukel” (Breaking Taboos by Hinting – Facts and Fiction in Herta Müller’s “Atemschaukel”) in the Department of Modern German Literature. Since then, his literary work has focused on exploring traumatic experiences, on memory as a constructive process, and on finding ways to stage these themes artistically.

Aldina Čemernica (PhD)

Aldina was was born in 1984 in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1995, at the age of eleven, she fled the besieged city and found refuge in Germany, where she has since lived and grown up in Berlin. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Humboldt University of Berlin, majoring in South Slavic Studies with a secondary focus on German Linguistics, and subsequently completed a master’s degree in Central and Eastern European Cultures at the same university.

She earned her doctorate at Humboldt University of Berlin with a dissertation on the identity constructions of young people of Bosniak origin in Berlin. She was a doctoral fellow of the Konsul Karl and Dr. Gabriele Sandmann Foundation and, in 2016, served as an adjunct lecturer at the Institute of Slavic and Hungarian Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin.

Beyond academia, Aldina is politically active as a member of the SPD Berlin and has worked as a research assistant to a member of parliament in the Berlin House of Representatives.

In her essay on childhood in besieged Sarajevo, Aldina reflects on everyday life during the siege from the perspective of a child. She explores questions such as: How did my friends and I experience daily life during the war? How were school lessons organized? And what was my personal perception of the adults around me?

Armina Galijaš (PhD)

Armina Galijaš has been a Senior Scientist at the Center for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz since 2011. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna and holds an M.A. from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Before joining the University of Graz, she worked as a research assistant and lecturer at both institutions. Her research and teaching focus on the contemporary history of Southeastern Europe. More about Armina Galijaš can be found on the research portal of the University of Graz.

Sabrina Halilović

Sabrina is a young Bosnian, born in Berlin in 2000. Through her Bosnian family, she maintains a strong connection to her country of origin. During her bachelor’s studies in Slavic Languages and Literatures (BCMS) as her major and Educational Sciences as her minor at Humboldt University of Berlin, she deepened her academic understanding of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the broader region. Focusing on topics such as multilingualism, interculturality, cultural and language policy, economics, and tourism, her bachelor’s thesis explored The Arab Region and Turkey as Soft Power in Today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. She also completed an internship at the Embassy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Berlin, where she gained further experience in German-Bosnian relations.

Ado Hasanović

Ado Hasanović (born in Srebrenica in 1986) is a Bosnian film director based in Rome. He graduated in Directing from the Sarajevo Film Academy in 2013 with his short film Mama, which achieved notable success on the festival circuit. That same year, he completed a program at the Norwegian Nansen Academy focused on interethnic dialogue.

In 2014, following an internship at the Cinema for Peace Foundation and participation in the Documentary Summer School organized by James Madison University (USA) in Bosnia and Herzegovina—where he received the award for Best Student—he enrolled at the prestigious National Film School Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, specializing in film directing. In 2017, he also completed a master’s degree in Dramaturgy at the Academy of Performing Arts in Sarajevo as a guest student.

His short films The Angel of Srebrenica, Blue Viking in Sarajevo, Mama, Breath of Life Srebrenica, Pink Elephant, Nomophobia, and Let There Be Colour have been screened internationally and received numerous awards. Since 2015, he has served as Artistic Director of the Mediterranean Short Film Festival The Author’s Passages in Sant’Antioco, Italy. He is also the creator of Cortovisioni – How to Make a Short Film, a workshop program guiding participants through the filmmaking process from concept to post-production.

In 2019, he co-founded the cultural association Admon Film in Sarajevo. On August 20, 2019, he was awarded the Sarajevan Golden Medallion by the Mayor of Sarajevo in recognition of his cultural achievements. He is currently working on his first feature-length documentary.

Emina Haye

Emina was born in northern Bosnia, in the region of Posavina. At the age of 14, she fled the war in Bosnia with her family, traveling via Croatia and Hungary before settling in Berlin. She studied German Language and Literature, History, and Psychology at the Technical University of Berlin and Humboldt University of Berlin. During her studies, she worked with various Berlin institutions and organizations as a freelance interpreter in the field of psychotherapy for war refugees from the former Yugoslavia.

Emina earned her master’s degree in Slavic Languages (BCMS and Russian) from Humboldt University of Berlin. Her master’s thesis focused on ethnic, religious, and national identity constructions in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 20th and 21st centuries. Her research interests include multilingualism, interculturality, identity, integration, and migration.

She currently works as a freelance translator, interpreter, and lecturer. In addition, she has served as an adjunct lecturer in BCMS at the Department of South Slavic Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin and as a translator and editor for Deutsche Welle Academy.

In her semi-fictional personal essay, Emina reflects on her childhood memories from the early years of the Bosnian war, exploring themes such as growing up, disappointment, betrayal, and loss of trust.

Azra Hodžić-Kadić

Azra is a lecturer in Bosnian and Croatian at the Language Center of the University of Vienna and works on a project at the Austrian Academy of Sciences focusing on minority languages. She is also a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Slavic Studies in Vienna. Her research interests include minority languages, multilingualism, the study of the Bosnian language in a multilingual society, and the role of native languages in shaping a polycentric identity.

Fluent in eight languages, Azra is the initiator and chair of the project Otkrij bosanski – Discover Bosnian in Vienna, which promotes the Bosnian language and multilingualism within the diaspora. She is the author of the first multilingual textbook for Bosnian as a second or foreign language, with another textbook and a grammar book currently in preparation. She also serves as chair and founder of the Multilingualism and Interculturalism Initiative, which advocates for multilingualism more broadly.

For Bosnia in Berlin, Azra will contribute poetic works characterized by strong emotionality and lyricism, as well as the unique perspective of a woman engaging with political reality. Even her politically charged poems are imbued with a deep emotional core.

Lumnije Jusufi (PhD)

Edina Klopić

Edina Klopić was born in Ulm, Germany, in 1974. She spent several formative years of her childhood in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina—a time that left a deep and lasting impression on her. In 1987, she returned to Germany but remained closely connected to her second homeland. During the war years, she volunteered as an interpreter for fellow Bosnian refugees, later tutored Syrian refugees in Germany, and co-founded the Cultural Association Bosnia and Herzegovina in Göppingen. In 2019, she launched the Sevdalinka initiative, a project dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional Bosnian songs. Alongside her cultural work, she is employed in the finance department of a software company.

In her essay, she explores the meaning of belonging to a homeland and the inner turmoil that followed the Srebrenica genocide. Her quest to find something that could unite the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina led her to discover that connection in Sevdah.

Sanija Kulenović

Sanija Kulenović studied art history, dedicating her thesis to examining art as a means of leaving traces of the Bosnian war. In her subsequent work, she has addressed themes of displacement, trauma, cultural heritage, identity, and cultures of memory through performances, workshops, and lectures. She believes in the power of art as an effective tool in peace-building processes. Her works have been presented at the Month of Performance Art in Berlin and the Musrara Mix Festival in Jerusalem, among others. In her literary contribution, the protagonist is the daughter of a guest worker who leaves Berlin at the age of five to grow up with foster parents in Bosnia. Ten years later, she returns to Berlin as an unaccompanied minor, seeking refuge from the turmoil of war.

Nadira Musić

Nadira was born in Zvornik, in eastern Bosnia. When the war in Bosnia broke out, her family fled to Germany, where she spent the first years of her life. Her journey later took her to France, where she partly grew up, before completing her master’s degree in Slavic Studies in Berlin.

Nadira’s multilingualism is not only the result of her migrations—it also extends to her scholarly interests. She has studied Alhamijado texts, which are written in Bosnian using Arabic script, an area in which her solid knowledge of Arabic proves particularly valuable. Her main academic interests lie in sociolinguistics and the political developments of the post-Yugoslav Western Balkans. She currently works at Deutsche Welle Academy and is a member of the editorial team of Bosnia in Berlin.

Denijen Pauljević

Denijen Pauljević was born in Belgrade and fled to Germany during the Yugoslav wars. He studied Intercultural Communication, took part in the screenwriting workshop at the University of Television and Film in Munich, and works on a range of literary, screenplay, and theater projects. From 2013 to 2018, he coordinated the Munich Balkan Days. In 2014, he received the Raniser Debüt author’s grant, followed in 2015 by the literary scholarship of the City of Munich. In the summer semester of 2021, he taught scenic writing at LMU Munich. His radio play debut Das Schneckengrabhaus was named Radio Play of the Month in January 2022.

Thomas Schad (PhD)

Thomas was born in 1980 in Lower Franconia (Unterfranken) and grew up there in a German-Bosnian family. After spending two years as a project coordinator in Sarajevo, he studied Eastern European Studies, Political Science, and South Slavic Studies in Berlin and Istanbul. Upon completing his studies, he worked as a consultant in the foreign affairs department of Freie Universität Berlin.

He later pursued doctoral studies at the Chair of Southeast European History at Humboldt University of Berlin and was a DFG fellow at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. His research interests focus on the transformation of nation-statehood, neopopulism, new media, public diplomacy, Southeastern Europe, Turkey, and Franconia. Outside academia, Thomas enjoys writing, blogging, and long cycling tours in nature. He is the author of the blog Incubator Metamorφ.

Tanja Šljivar

Tanja was born in 1988 in Banja Luka, then part of SFR Yugoslavia. She studied Dramaturgy in Belgrade and Applied Theater Studies in Giessen. Her plays have been translated into ten languages and staged at renowned theaters such as Deutsches Theater Berlin, Schauspiel Stuttgart, Theater Paderborn, Schauspiel Dortmund, Narodno pozorište Užice (Serbia), Atelje 212 Belgrade, BITEF Theater, and the National Theater Belgrade. She has received numerous awards and scholarships, and in 2019 served as Acting Director of the National Theatre in Belgrade.

[Cover picture: Bookstore in Berlin-Charlottenburg. By Emina Haye, 2018.]