Development of a Lifelong Learning Course for Rising Innovativeness of Raw Materials Professionals in Eastern and Southeastern Europe

A lack of lifelong learning courses on raw materials in Eastern and Southeastern Europe (ESEE) results in lower levels of innovativeness for this region’s professionals. The consortium of Dubrovnik International ESEE Mining school—DIM ESEE project (2016–2020) conducted several questionnaire campaigns in order to establish the main needs, challenges, and current status of innovation utilization among raw materials professionals in the ESEE region. Based on these results, the DIM consortium developed four annual 3-day workshops within the new project, DIM ESEE-2: Implementing innovations, which would secure relevant content delivered by expert lecturers for an affordable price.

Stefan Uroš II Milutin Nemanjić (1282–1321)

King Stefan Uroš II Milutin Nemanjić (1282—Donje Nerodimlje, October 29, 1321) was a Serbian medieval king, the seventh ruler of the Serbian Nemanide dynasty, the son of King Stefan Uroš I (r. 1243–1276) and Queen Helen Nemanjić (see), the brother of the King Stefan Dragutin (r. 1276–1282) and the father of King Stefan Dečanski (r. 1322–1331). Together with his great grandfather Stefan Nemanja, the founder of the Nemanide dynasty, and his grandson, Emperor Stefan Uroš IV Dušan, King Milutin is considered the most powerful ruler of the Nemanide dynasty. The long and successful military breach of King Milutin, down the Vardar River Valley and deep into the Byzantine territories, represents the beginning of Serbian expansion into southeastern Europe, making it the dominant political power in the Balkan region in the 14th century. During that period, Serbian economic power grew rapidly, mostly because of the development of trading and mining. King Milutin founded Novo Brdo, an internationally important silver mining site. He started minting his own money, producing imitations of Venetian coins (grosso), which gradually diminished in value. This led to the ban of these coins by the Republic of Venice and provided King Milutin a place in Dante’s Divina Commedia. King Milutin had a specific philoktesia fervor: He built or renovated over three dozen Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries not only in Serbia but also in Thessaloniki, Mt. Athos, Constantinople and The Holy Land. Over fifteen of his portraits can be found in the monumental painting ensembles of Serbian medieval monasteries as well as on two icons.

Europeanisation in Southeastern Europe

Despite relatively recent enlargement rounds, the European Union (EU) is bound to enlarge even further. Yet, for a country to be admissible into the club, it must have successfully Europeanised in multiple areas. Against that background, this chapter aims to assess why apparently similar candidate countries in the Balkans manage the Europeanisation process with widely divergent degrees of success. To answer that question, a diverse and well-established literature review is accounted for, while applying rationalist and sociological approaches to new unexplored cases and examining specific domestic pre-conditions and factors regarding their potential to induce Europeanisation. By assessing past enlargement rounds, notably the Central and Eastern European enlargement and the ongoing Western Balkans enlargement, the objective is to provide for a thorough account of the effectiveness of Europeanisation in the Balkans, especially as regards EU conditionality in the area of the rule of law.

The Evolution of Anti-Corruption Legislation in Interwar Yugoslavia (1918–1941)

This article maps the legal framework of the anti-corruption legislation in interwar Yugoslavia, by examining the context and contents of the evolving anti-corruption laws in the period 1918–1941. It examines the intentions of the law-makers and the messaging that they wanted to convey through the legislation in a diachronic perspective, as well as the focus of the anti-corruption efforts towards petty corruption versus grand corruption. It poses questions towards the applicability of existing corruption models in the context of interwar Yugoslavia and proposes new directions for studying persisting structural phenomena shaping corruption practices in Southeastern Europe to this day.

Serbia and Southeastern Europe between Global and East European History

Drawing on a half century of Balkan research and publication that started in Belgrade, John Lampe reviews three new Western histories of the region and their attention to Serbia from prominent Western historians. Germany’s Calic examines only Southeastern Europe, while Connelly from the US and Bideleux and Jeffries from the UK include the Balkans in their volumes on Eastern Europe.

Geodetic foundations of cartography in Europe in 19th century

Geodetic surveying comprises the determination of locations on and the dimensions of the earth’s surface at a various scales. In the 19th century, its technologies are those of direct measurement of the earth’s surface combined with astronomical observations. Its social context encompasses all those individuals and institutions involved in the creation, preservation, use, and arrangement of knowledge of the earth. In the introductory part of the paper the author mentions several important events in the history of the 19th century geodesy. Geodetic work on determining the size of the Earth by measuring the lengths of the meridian arcs continues in this century. An international surveying organization was established and the international meter convention adopted. Basing on a detailed research of geodetic surveying in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe in the 19th century, a part of these surveys is presented that relates to Switzerland, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. Common to all these geodetic surveys is that they were necessary for the development of cartography and were carried out by military institutions. The developed geodetic networks are characterized by the use of different ellipsoids, different prime meridians, different coordinate systems and their origin. In the area under consideration in the 19th century, there were five different ellipsoids in use suggested by Bessel, Bonenberger, Schmidt, Valbeck and Zach. Prime meridians were

Electronic Research Infrastructure for Bulgarian Medieval Written Heritage: history and perspectives

The paper traces the history of the Histdict system, which turned into a basis for the new Electronic Research Infrastructure for Bulgarian Medieval Written Heritage, which was included into the National Research Roadmap at the end of 2020. Through this act the state declares its support to our resources, that have been so far created and supported by project funding. And of course, it is a big recognition of our efforts and achievements. On the other hand, this act coincided with two other events: the inclusion of RESILIENCE (Research Infrastructure on Religious Studies) in which Histdict is taking part, in the European Research Infrastructures Roadmap and the start of the updating and upgrading of the system. Given the situation the Infrastructure is now facing new challenges—not only the successful improvement of the services it offers, but also the inclusion of the Orthodox Cultural Heritage into European research exchange, which will promote and popularize the history and culture of Southeastern Europe.

Establishing a Luminescence-Based Chronostratigraphy for the Last Glacial-Interglacial Cycle of the Loess-Palaeosol Sequence Achajur (Armenia)

The loess-palaeosol section Achajur is part of the Sevkar loess area in north-eastern Armenia and comprises three prominent pedocomplexes with intercalated loess units, probably spanning at least three glacial-interglacial cycles. With its central position between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, the Sevkar loess area serves as important bridge between loess sections in southeastern Europe and Central Asia. Establishing a numerical chronology of the Achajur loess section enables correlation with other loess-palaeosol sections and a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the region. In this paper, we focus on the chronology of the last glacial-interglacial cycle using luminescence dating on fine grain (4–11 µm) material. We compare two post-IR-IRSL protocols on polymineral fine grain using different stimulation temperatures, in order to evaluate the influence of fading and potential unbleachable residuals on our samples. For a backup of the younger ages (<50 ka), we also applied a single aliquot protocol on the quartz fine grain fraction. The results indicate that the upper loess unit was deposited during MIS3 and 4, while MIS2 ages are not present. The underlying pedocomplex and loess unit fall into MIS5 and MIS6, respectively. This confirms that the loess was deposited during dry phases and pedocomplexes formed during wetter phases, as is also shown by comparison with other palaeoenvironmental proxies from the area.

Toxoplasma gondii Genotypes Circulating in Serbia—Insight into the Population Structure and Diversity of the Species in Southeastern Europe, a Region of Intercontinental Strain Exchange

In Europe, Toxoplasma gondii lineage II is dominant, and ToxoDB#1 the most frequently occurring genotype. The abundance of lineage III genotypes varies geographically and lineage I are rare, yet present in several regions of the continent. Data on the T. gondii population structure in southeastern Europe (SEE) are scarce, yet necessary to appreciate the diversity of the species in Europe. To help fill this gap, we genotyped 67 strains from nine species of intermediate hosts in Serbia by MnPCR-RFLP, determined the population structure, and identified the genotypes using ToxoDB. A neighbor-joining tree was also constructed from the isolates genotyped on nine loci. While 42% of the total genotype population consisted of ToxoDB#1 and ToxoDB#2, variant genotypes of both lineages comprised 46% of the population in wildlife and 28% in domestic animals and humans. One genotype of Africa 4 lineage was detected in a human sample. Interestingly, the findings include one lineage III variant and one II/III recombinant isolate with intercontinental distribution, which appear to be moderately related to South American genotypes. Based on these findings, SEE is a region of underappreciated T. gondii genetic diversity and possible strain exchange between Europe and Africa.