WELCOME!

Welcome! I guess that most of you reading this will be part of my tutorial group for History of Contemporary Warfare, 1945-1991. Before we get going with the course I would like to take this opportunity to tell you a bit more about myself. I also hope that you will be posting similar information on your blogs which you will have created during the first week of induction.

My name is Ivan Zverzhanovski and I am a lecturer at the Department of War Studies King's College London, where I am also completing my PhD. The title of my thesis is "Security, Democracy and the War Crimes Legacy: Transforming Civil-Military Relations in Serbia and Montenegro". As the title indicates the topic deals with the attempt to create a system of democratic civilian control of the armed forces in post-Milosevic Yugoslavia/Serbia & Montenegro. But I am sure that you will hear a lot about it in the following months.

Apart from the obvious interest in civil-military relations, I am also interested in issues relating to International Humanitarian Law and the prosecution of war crimes. In addition, I am interested in aspects of contemporary conflicts and in particular the role of the media. I am finishing a year as a Research Associate on an ESRC funded project which looks at the way media portray security salient issues (see the links section).

On a personal level, I am from Serbia, but have been in London for just over 8 years now. I just got married and my wife is Italian. No kids at the moment :-)

While I have had a couple of unsuccessful attempts at blogging in the past, I will endeavor to use this blog for our extra-curricular discussions and any things of interest that I might find and believe that some of you might want to read.

I am looking forward to working with all of you...