Jelena Subotic

Jelena Subotic is a graduate student in Political Science. Her work lies at the cross-section of comparative politics and international relations, with the special focus on transitional justice, human rights, and international organizations. Jelena’s dissertation explores the proliferation of international models of transitional justice (war crimes trials or truth commissions) and political contestation these models create in states that adopt them. Although the presumption in the international political and human rights community is that these transitional justice arrangements are “good things,” we are now beginning to understand that they can unleash many political and social paradoxes for societies that try to deal with crimes of the past. Jelena’s dissertation shares the idealized goal of transitional justice, but also identifies conditions under which justice projects will backfire. In this sense, the project will be valuable for designing future transitional justice initiatives. Jelena will spend the summer of 2004 collecting preliminary research data in the former Yugoslavia.

Read more about Jelena’s fellowship experience here.