Contact: info@bosnianmemorypaths.com

Anja Breljak

Berlin, Germany

Who am I?
One of the questions I am afraid of most. I was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the war we fled the country, and went to Germany. I grew up in Berlin, started dreaming, thinking and writing in German. Now I am studying philosophy and economics, working as a journalist, and asking this question „Who are you?“ on my own.

The Bosnian Memory Paths meant to me confrontation with my own memory paths. When I was a young girl I used to ignore them. But then I started asking: my parents, my grandparents, people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, those who gave me many answers to those questions I was afraid of most were the participants of Bosnian Memory Paths.

Marta Mazuś

Warsaw, Poland

I’m curious and insatiable. I want to know more, ask deeper and go further. I try to stick do this whatever I do, which at the moment is: finishing my studies in Sociology, working as a journalist and developing my new passion – photography.

After my first travel to Bosnia in July 2009 I felt that I needed to come back there and know better people in order to understand more of the complicated past and even more complicated present of this country. I thought that it was important to show the large number of Bosnian emigrants, who left the country as children or teenagers, and give them voice 15 years after the end of the war. Their view on Bosnia, a view both from inside and from outside, was for me something that had not been presented before.

Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc

Ljubljana, Slovenia

I’m a post-Yugoslav. This identity category I came up with when I realised that being a Serb is too narrow for me and that the cultural and political space I feel I most belong to is the one of former Yugoslavia, or what some call Yugosphere. Dealing with the past is not only embedded into my personal feeling of identity, but it is the central theme of my PhD studies and research work I conduct at the Peace Institute. I’m fascinated and puzzled by the ways people remember, both individually and collectively, and both inspired and troubled by the ways they variously interpret historical events.

Listening to our interviewee’s life stories and disclosing layers of their multidimensional identities were, for me, the two most interesting topics within the Bosnian Memory Paths project. The enthusiasm of my team colleagues, on the other hand, was the incentive without which this interest would make no sense.

Hanka Nowicka

Warsaw, Poland

I am Central-European. So nothing extraordinary here: girl from a capital city with university diploma (history) and big appetite for the rest of the World.
I am a gourmet of stories.
I like when they digest me. I am a doer. I can't stand standing still.
I am a dreamer - I wish to be part of valuable journalism which is opening the people's minds and hearts. The Bosnian Memory Paths is gonna make my dream come true.

Ergin Opengin

Paris, France

I’m a Kurd, carrying my childhood memories from my hometown filled with heavy artillery noise and fear. I’m on my way to become a linguist, with ears wide open to every sound –interpretable or not. I’m fond of personal narratives and oral literature, believing that they are unmediated expressions of authentic experiences and accumulation of wisdom.

Against the background of these three components of my past and present, I easily felt enthusiastic about The Bosnian Memory Paths. Also, comparing the influence of different immigration settings on the daily language practices, and handling the task in a dynamic young group of researchers, were the principal factors that pushed me to take part in this unique enterprise.