Dr. Aleksandra Jerkov Serbia
She was born in 1982 in Novi Sad. Since May 2024, she has been conducting postdoctoral research at the University of Graz, at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, where she focuses on reconciliation processes in the former Yugoslav countries. She is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Security Studies, EDUCONS University in Novi Sad, teaching courses in international relations, basic theories of globalization, and political theory. Within the Academy for the Development of Democracy (ADD), she is one of the coordinators of a project aimed at amending the legal definition of the criminal offense of rape in the Western Balkans and has led several projects related to dealing with the past and reconciliation in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
She graduated from the Department of Serbian Language and Linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, where she was the top student of her generation in 2005. She earned her master’s degree in European Integration and Regionalism at the University of Graz, and obtained her PhD from the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Belgrade.
From 2016 to 2020, she was a member and chair of the Committee on Human Rights of Parliamentarians within the Inter-Parliamentary Union. She participated twice in the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). She is an alumna of the Munich Young Leaders program of the Munich Security Conference and a member of the Global Progressive Network.
She is best known for her advocacy for a civic-oriented Serbia, her opposition to far-right nationalists, her clear pro-European stance, and her unwavering commitment to democratic and European values. From 2007 to 2020, she served as a Member of Parliament in the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia. In 2012, she was elected President of the City Assembly of Novi Sad, becoming the first woman to hold this position.