EXPERTISE:

Dr. Seim is a leading international expert on politics and ethnic conflicts of the WESTERN BALKANS, with a PhD in conflict studies from the University of Vienna. Seim’s magnum opus, his doctoral dissertation “The Road to War in the Bosnian Municipality of Kotor Varoš in 1992 – A Microhistory,” at the University of Vienna in 2023” places Seim as a leading international expert on the fall of YUGOSLAVIA and the war in BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA. See PhD peer reviews HERE!

Dr. Seim has decades of studies and research on Eastern Europe, The Balkans, and the Middle East (BA, MA, PhD) at the Universities of Bergen, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Vienna, and Jerusalem. He participated at the post-graduate Interdisciplinary Balkan program at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna organised by the IDM (Institute for Danube und Central Europa). Seim attended courses at another dozen universities within human rights law, democratization, and various Slavic languages. He has worked for Oslo Municipality as a free-lance translator/interpreter of Serbian/Croatian to Norwegian/English. He speaks German and some Russian and Bulgarian. Seim has experiences as higher executive officer in the Norwegian public sector and as advisor to the Norwegian OSCE delegation in VIENNA.

Uniquely, Seim has served for 18 years for the Norwegian Resource Base for Democracy and Human Rights (NORDEM) as part of the NORCAP professional expertise rooster of the Norwegian Refugee Council. He has taken on two dozen missions as long-term and short-term political/election analyst for OSCE-ODIHR, European Union External Action Service (EEAS), and The Carter Center. This has enabled insider insights into politics and elections in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, North-Macedonia, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Türkiye, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Malawi, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.

Seim is a frequently used academic commentator in Norwegian and Danish newspapers about about election, politics, and ethnic/military conflicts at the Western Balkans, in Eastern Europe, and in the Middle East. See dozens of publication examples HERE!

As an election analyst, Seim is particularly interested in and competent on political strategy, party organisation, electoral campaigns, national minority participation, women participation, and electoral process as a whole, including elections organisation and electoral results analysis. Seim has a track-record of spot-on political predictions and ability to independent analysis and policy advice in sensitive political environments while upholding the principles of impartiality, integrity, and objectivity. Examples here??

Seim is also an insider analyst to the political, electoral, and military developments in UKRAINE after having followed elections and worked long-term in Crimea (2009-10), Donetsk (2014), and Dnipropetrovsk (2019) for OSCE/ODIHR, and short-term in Kyiv, Odessa, and Mykolajew (2014-15). SEIM Analytics offers clients in the security sector daily/weekly analyses of the war in Ukraine with fresh notes, predictions, and strategy evaluations.

As a conflict analyst, Seim has closely followed and published about military conflicts in the MIDDLE EAST (Syria, Yemen, Libya, Israel/Palestine). He pursues a growing interest for the South of CAUCASUS and CENTRAL and SOUTH ASIA. The latest years, Seim is expanding the geographical footprint in South Asia: In 2020-21 Seim was political analyst & campaign/inclusion analyst for six months for The Carter Center in MYANMAR before the military takeover. In 2024, Seim had a long-term election observation engagement for European Union in the Eastern Province in SRI LANKA, which also was an opportunity to observe democratization in a post-conflict (Tamil/Muslim) region. Seim also worked for EU EEAS in Bangladesh and in Malawi.

See further descriptions and detailed professional activities on Linkedin (25) Øyvind Hvenekilde Seim, Ph.D. | LinkedIn

Academically, SEIM’s magnus opus is the doctoral dissertation > “The Road to War in the Bosnian Municipality of Kotor Varoš in 1992: A Microhistory” (2022), defended at the University of Vienna on 9 May 2023.

Abstract: See also in German in phaidra.univie.ac.at/detail/o:1602839 > The road to war in the Bosnian municipality of Kotor Varoš in 1992 : a microhistory (PHAIDRA - o:1602839)  - Der Weg zum Krieg in der bosnischen Gemeinde Kotor Varoš in 1992 - eine Mikrogeschichte

Keywords: Bosnia, Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Yugoslavia, nationalism, state dissolution, civil war, ethnic conflict, post-communist transition, oral history, memory studies, microhistory, historical anthropology, political history, ICTY.

Peer review quotes about the doctoral dissertation:

•        “Seim’s critical review of the literatures being exceptionally thorough and illuminative, (…) its encyclopaedic critical review of the existing literatures, in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, English and German. In thirty years I have not seen such a thorough presentation.” (Dr. Robert Hayden, 2023)

•        “The thesis not only challenges some of the theoretical formulations that have driven recent historical work on Bosnia, but have pretty much demolished them.” (...) “The dissertation is very well written. Publication of it or parts of it would need only normal copy editing.” (Dr. Robert Hayden, 2023)

•        “...a correction to tendencies of romantization of interethnic relations in pre-war Bosnia” or “for holding the criteria ethnicity for irrelevant.” (Dr. Ulf Brunnbauer, 2023, translated from German)

•        “I enjoyed your careful scrutiny of the demographic situation, (…) showing the practice on the ground. Also, the highlander thesis, and these overgeneralizations about urban virtue and rural primitiveness and violence.” (authorized by Dr. Maria Todorova on 30 November 2024)

•        “I am so much for microhistorical approaches, if they are conducted in a sophisticated manner, with an eye to the macro-framework, and you have marvelously succeeded in this. Equally, your thoughts on scale (…) So, sincere congratulations.” (authorized by Dr. Maria Todorova on 30 November 2024)

Forthcoming as: Microhistorical Reflections on the Road to War in Bosnia in 1992: Case Study Kotor Varoš (Revised doctoral dissertation, scheduled for publication in 2026-27)