Hello and welcome to my academic website!
I am Associate professor of political science at the University of Geneva (50%) and Deputy director of the Department of General Democracy Research at the Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich (50%). In the context of a strategic partnership between the universities of Geneva and Zurich, I have founded Swiss Research Centre on Democratic Innovations. I am also the co-editor-in-chief of the Swiss Political Science Review and the co-president of the association Demoscan.
Previously (October 2018 – September 2024), I was a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor at the University of Geneva, where I worked on the research projects on “A non-populist theory of direct democracy” (2018-2022) and the follow-up project “Women and immigrant-origin minorities in deliberative minipublics” (2022-2024) . From April 2015 until June 2018) I was a Senior Research Fellow and a Lecturer at the Department of Political Science of the University of Lucerne, where I worked on a three-year research project (“Racist voters and minority candidates. A normative puzzle and an empirical challenge with a focus on the Swiss case“) funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF-Ambizione grant). Before that I was a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA), University of Zurich (2009-2015). I held visiting lectureships (Lehrbeauftragter / chargé de cours) at the universities of Fribourg, Geneva, Lausanne, Lucerne, Sarajevo, Zurich and ETH Zurich. In the winter semester 2023-2024 I was a Guest Professor at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. Between 2014 and 2018 I was affiliated as a visiting researcher with the KU Leuven in the context of the European FP7 project “Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe MIME” with a research project on linguistic justice.
My research interests focus on democratic innovations and challenges to democracy in divided societies. Combining the approaches of political theory and comparative politics, I have been working on topics such as group representation, quotas, multiculturalism, nationalism, institutional engineering, electoral systems, federalism, linguistic justice, direct democracy, and discrimination.
I was a member of the City Council of Lugano (2004-2008) and of parliament of Canton Ticino (2007-2013). On behalf of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation I conducted the project “The Swiss contribution to constitutional reform in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (2008-2013) and am currently a member of the steering board of the association i-dijaspora. Between 2012 and 2023 I was a member of the Federal Commission against Racism. From 2015 until 2018 I was a member of the Foundation Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation, in which I represented the Swiss national association of young academic researchers (actionuni). I was/am also active as a steering board member of the European Movement Switzerland (NEBS/NOMES; 2014-2022) and as the Secretary (pro bono) of the Support Office of Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC). From July 2020, I have been a member of the Foundation Council the Kurt Imhof Foundation for Media Quality.
I hold degrees in political science from the universities of Geneva (licence, 1999), McGill (M.A., 2000), Zurich (Dr. phil., 2008), and Lucerne (Habilitation, 2022). I was a visiting student in Paris (Sciences Po), London (LSE) and Montreal (Université de Montréal), and a post-doctoral fellow in Louvain (UC Louvain), Canterbury (U Kent), Florence (EUI) and Princeton (Department of Politics, Princeton U). In 2012 the Swiss Political Science Association assigned me the award for the best (ex aequo) doctoral thesis.
You can reach me at nenad.stojanovic@unige.ch. For further information I invite you to download Stojanovic_CV+Projects+Publications
Nenad Stojanović, October 2024