The doctoral dissertation The Road to War in the Bosnian Municipality of Kotor Varoš in 1992 – A Microhistory defended 2023 at the University of Vienna was not financed. Finalizing this magnum opus of nearly 400 pages was a considerable financial and social burden and sacrifice. The dissertation received outstanding peer-reviewing, and now opens for numerous prospective research paths. HELP SUPPORT that work, as SEIM can not volunteer for academic work any longer.

Several years have passed since SEIMs last extensive fieldwork from the ground in Bosnia and the Western Balkans. It is time to reengage with the field through the new studies that are in preparation. Donations and support will enable travel, field research, archive work, and networking primarily in Bosnia and Herzegovina, including probable visits to Serbia (incl. Kosovo-Metohija), Croatia, and Montenegro.

Dr. Seim recently signed a letters of intent for academic cooperation with University of Banja Luka. This comes on top of collaboration with academics at other universities in the region.

Support these research trips and cooperation!

Pressures present in academic environments of formal-institutional, administrative, financial, political-ideological, and social character (academia as a social space) might create conditionalities that are impacting research. Pressures and power mechanisms within academia, as well as its dogmatic and discourse-preserving tendencies, makes me believe that my comprehensive doctoral research on Bosnia rather emerged DESPITE OF my relation with universities (in particular in Sweden), than as a product of them.

Donate to counter intellectual obedience and self-indoctrination and safeguard academic freedom !

In his reflexive sociology, Pierre Bourdieu implemented his theory of culture onto the analysis of academic practice and he discovered a “social space within which scientific practice is accomplished” (Homo Academicus, 1988). These networks and social power micro-relations and practices can influence academic freedom negatively. Moreover, reputation-seeking and quality control by peer group judgment can lead to intellectual subservience and academic sterility. In times of social media dynamics, these peer-pressures are not only vertically impacting in the power hierarchy – encouraging existing political and ideological biases – but horizontally, as self-internalized herd mentality and group control, among other inflicted from social media mobs. These social power mechanisms might be particularly influential when the research field is becoming emotionalized and politicized, like the research on the war in Bosnia and the break-up of Yugoslavia.

The neoliberal New Public Management (NPM) philosophy of rationalization and bureaucratization of the academic sector the last decades led to its restructuring according to commercial motivations, control measurements, and reward incentives, where quantitative requirements instead of qualitative measurements is likely to have been impacting on the knowledge production.

The combined effect of these social power mechanisms and external power structures scrutinizing academia is that instead of fostering academic courage and critical engagement with power, through intellectual obedient behavior, situations of servility, and what popularly is characterized as “political correctness,” academia can instead become the place of the upholders of these power structures and elite discourses.

Raju Thomas (2003) writes how “a new government-media-academia complex appears to have replaced the old government-military-industrial complex” and how “freedom of thoughts and expression had given way to a new government-controlled and directed intellectual patriotism.”

To counter these mechanisms, supporting free and independent research is paramount !

After competitive evaluation processes, SEIM Research has earlier been supported by the following institutions, donators, funding schemes and scholarships:

- Edith Saurer Research Prize (Vienna)

- Literar Mechana Wien (Austria)

- Austrian State Scholarship (Ernest Mach) for foreign students)

- Israeli Scholarship for Middle Eastern and Israeli studies at Rothberg International School at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (twice)

- Meltzer’s Scholarship and Travel grant for highly proficient students at the University of Bergen

- ERASMUS, NORDPLUS

Benjamin Johannessen’s Family grant (x 5) for highly proficient students from Bergen

-Helge Ax:son Johnsson Foundation (x 3 in Sweden/Stockholm)

- The Lerici Foundation for research stays in Italy/Bologna-Forli

(After winning an essay writing competition about Japan in 2008, Seim being elected as Norwegian representative for a 2-week Study Tour of European Youth to Japan paid by the Japanese MFA)