The commission for the “Vucina Vasovic” award, called after a famous Montenegrin political scientist, consists of Damir Kapidzic, associate professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Sarajevo, Olivera Komar, associate professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Montenegro and Bojan Todosijevic, senior research associate at the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade.

Damir Kapidzic holds a PhD in political science from the University of Sarajevo. The subjects of his research work are ethnic conflicts, political parties, and the processes of institutionalization of democratic and authoritarian policies. Southeast Europe is the focus of his work, but it includes comparative perspectives from Southeast Asia and East Africa. He is coordinator of the project “Contexts of extremism in the societies of MENA and the Balkans” within Horizon 2020, in front of the University of Sarajevo. He is the editor of a special issue of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies (20/1) on “Illiberal Politics in Southeast Europe”. He is a member of the board of the Research Commission “Politics and Ethnicity” of the International Political Science Association and a member of the American Political Science Association.
Olivera Komar holds a PhD from the Faculty of Political Science, University of Montenegro, after which she did postdoctoral research at the University of Bologna. The main areas of her research are political participation, especially voting and voter motivation. She is the author of a number of scientific papers in the field of political behavior and the book Voters in Montenegro: Factors of Electoral and Party Preference. Olivera is the main researcher for Montenegro in three important international surveys: the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems CSES, the European Values Survey EVS and the European Social Survey (ESS). She also leads the Montenegrin National Election Study (MNES).
Bojan Todosijevic holds a PhD from the Department of Political Science at the Central European University in Budapest. Prior to his engagement at the Institute of Social Sciences, he was employed at the University of Twente in Netherlands and at the Institute for Social Research of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Bojan Todosijević’s research is focused on understanding social and political attitudes and political behavior. In his works, he dealt with the problems of the structure of ideology, and the role of ideological orientations as mediators of the connection between psychological dispositions and political attitudes. He also does research on nationalist attitudes, political tolerance, and populist ideology. His works are characterized by a comparative approach, i.e. comparative analysis of data from different countries. He is an expert in the field of statistical data analysis and public opinion research methodology.
He has participated in several international scientific projects, including The Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and The True European Water. He has published papers in leading domestic and international journals, such as Psychology, European Journal of Political Research, Political Psychology, International Political Science Review.
The “Vucina Vasovic” award implies infrastructural and financial support for collecting data for doctoral research and will be awarded to one doctoral student. The application for the award is open until May 10th, 2021.