Filip Ejdus is a professor of security studies with the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade. In his academic research, he studies how identity, memory, emotions, and rationality affect security policy and international interventions. He also specializes in security sector reform, defense policy, civil-military relations, and the European Union as a global actor. The geographic focus of his interests are the Western Balkans, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. His most recent book is “Crisis and Ontological Insecurity: Serbia’s Anxiety over Kosovo’s Secession” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). He is also the founder and co-editor in chief of the Journal of Regional Security. In addition, Ejdus is the president of the Central and Eastern European International Studies Association, a board member of the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, and the co-chair of the Regional Stability in South East Europe Study Group at the PfP Consortium of Defence Academies and Security Studies Institutes. In November 2023, he was one of the initiators of ProGlas, a pro-democracy group. Ejdus obtained his bachelor of arts and doctorate degrees at the Faculty of Political Sciences, a joint master’s degree at the London School of Economics and Sciences Po Paris and was a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bristol.
As Serbia’s government has tended ever-more toward authoritarianism, it has continued to pursue a middle path among the great powers as it attempts to cement its security and economic needs. Hanging above it all are questions about its EU membership ambitions and the status of Kosovo.
The Russo-Ukrainian war has awakened tensions in the Western Balkans as the structures created to maintain peace in the region are faltering. The New Lines Institute’s Western Balkans Observatory presents a collection of essays examining security issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia.
