Tamara Pavasovic

My name is Tamara Pavasovic, and I am currently pursuing my Ph.D. at Harvard University. I received my B.A. in International Studies from Allegheny College in 2002, with the thesis “Ethnicity and Religion in Bosnia: Islamic Influence during the 1992-1995 War.” After college, I worked at the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC, before obtaining my M.A. degree in the Political Science department from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in 2003. At Syracuse, I served as a teaching assistant for American Government and International Relations courses, as well as an instructor for Political Argument and Reasoning. My graduate work deals mostly with issues of ethnicity and religion, ethnic violence and nationalism, collective memory and identity, and political socialization, and focuses on the Balkan area. My M.A. thesis at Syracuse, “Reconstructing Ethnic Identity in Serbia: Ethno-Nationalist Socialization through Textbooks,” examined how history textbooks impacted ethnicity transformation dynamics from 1974 to 2002. I followed up this work with a generational analysis study, where I examined whether the basic attitudes and worldviews Serbian individuals were socialized into during their formative years remained mostly constant throughout their lives and during the turmoil in the 1990s. At Harvard, I’m currently working on my qualifying paper, on the topic of ethnic stereotypes in children.