Mixed Families: Navigating Identity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies

Mixed Families: Navigating Identity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies (MIXED*)

The MIXED project examines interethnic and interreligious families as key sites for understanding identity formation, social cohesion, and boundary-making in Central and Southeastern Europe. Combining historical and sociological approaches, the research analyses mixed families across macro (state and church policies), meso (institutions and expert discourses), and micro (everyday experiences) levels from the late nineteenth century to the present. Focusing on Hungary and the post-Yugoslav space, the project investigates how legal regimes, conflict, and gender relations shape belonging across generations. By integrating intersectional and longitudinal perspectives, it reconceptualises mixedness as a dynamic process linking intimate life with broader political and social transformations.

Speaker:
Karolina Lendák-Kabók is an Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Social Sciences, and Principal Investigator of the MTA–ELTE Momentum Research Group MIXED – Mixed Families: Identity and Belonging in Post-Conflict Societies (2025-2030). She was a recipient of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022–2024). Her research focuses on intermarriage, minority rights, gender, and everyday nationalism, with particular attention to identity negotiation and boundary-making in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the author of National Minorities in Serbian Academia – the Role of Gender and Language Barrier (Palgrave, 2022) and has published widely on interethnic relations and identity politics. She serves as Associate Editor of Nationalities Papers.

Moderation:
Elisabeth Alber, Eurac Research Institute for Comparative Federalism

Organized by the Institute for Comparative Federalism, the Eurac Research Democracy Dialogues offer agendas for work where the disciplines law and politics meet. Its multidisciplinary conversations center on participatory governance, democratic and institutional innovations, autonomies studies, and deliberative constitutionalism in multilevel systems.