Katarina Beširević: Reflecting on Individual Memories of the NATO Intervention in Serbia

Katarina Beširević (MA, CEU) is a PhD candidate and junior researcher at the University of Belgrade, the Faculty of Philosophy’s History Department. She is a fellow at the Center for American Studies at the same faculty.

The NATO bombings in 1999 have had a profound impact on the collective memory of Serbian society, with official political representations in Serbia having shaped public perceptions of the NATO intervention, particularly since the early 2000s. This raises critical questions from the perspective of a "history from below": How do these official narratives intersect with personal memories? And how do people from different political, social and cultural backgrounds remember the bombings? On the one hand, these questions are relevant with regard to the growth of anti-American sentiment in Serbia as a result of the 1990s. On the other hand, it will be shown that the method of oral history can reveal different individual perspectives on the NATO bombing.