Dr Sonja Stojanovic Gajic

Sonja Stojanović Gajić is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies South East Europe, University of Rijeka. Her research examines how geopolitical competition and autocratisation transform security governance, democratic resistance to autocracy and inter-ethnic conflict in the Western Balkans and the Eastern Neighbourhood. She currently co-coordinates the work package on geopolitical competition and EU strategic autonomy in the Horizon Europe project GeoPower-EU. Her publications include articles in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding and the Journal of Regional Security, a co-edited special issue on state capture and security (2021) and the co-edited volume Security Community Practices in the Western Balkans (Routledge, 2018). She teaches security and illiberalism, critical geopolitics and EU enlargement, serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Regional Security and Security and Human Rights, and holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Belgrade. Her scholarship is grounded in practice. From 2006 to 2019 she directed the Belgrade Centre for Security Policy, building it into a leading think tank on democratic oversight of the security sector and co-founding the Belgrade Security Forum. As an independent consultant, she translated research into practice for international and national public sector organisations, including the OSCE and DCAF, through commissioned policy assessments, scenario-based crisis-management exercises, executive training, and mediated dialogue between security institutions and civil society.