Curriculum Vitae:

Dejan Valentinčič is primarily employed as a lawyer at the joint Intermunicipal local government of Bovec, Kobarid, Tolmin, and Kanal ob Soči. Additionally, he works as a researcher and Head of the Centre for Social Science Research at the American Slovenian Education Foundation (ASEF) and serves as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Slovenian and International Studies at New University. Between March 2020 and June 2022, he was State Secretary at the Government Office for Slovenians Abroad. He teaches part-time at the School of Advanced Social Studies (SASS) as an associate professor of political science and at the European Faculty of Law and the School of Government and European Studies (SGES), both New University, as an associate professor of law.

He is also actively involved in civil society. He serves as President of the Slovenian Conference of the World Slovenian Congress, an organization established in 1991 during Slovenia’s independence process, modeled after the World Jewish Congress, with the goal of uniting Slovenians from Slovenia and abroad. He is also the first Slovenian elected to the board of directors of the international non-governmental organization Europeans Throughout the World (ETTW), based in Brussels, which connects European diaspora organizations and lobbies European institutions for the favorable treatment of mobile Europeans.

Dejan obtained both his LL.B. and LL.M. degrees with honors from the European Faculty of Law in Nova Gorica and earned his Ph.D. from the School of Advanced Social Studies in Nova Gorica. His doctoral supervisor was internationally recognized sociologist Nikolai Genov, professor emeritus at Freie Universität Berlin, and his co-supervisor was lawyer Jernej Letnar Černič.

In the past, he has worked as a teaching assistant at SGES, a legal consultant at the Slovenian Environment Agency, a junior researcher at SASS, a legal clerk at the Court of Appeals in Koper, and as a secretary in two ministerial cabinets at the Government Office for Slovenians Abroad. Simultaneously, he worked part-time as the director of the Institute ASEF for Education and Research, as Dean and Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Slovenian and International Studies, and as a researcher at the European Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Government and European Studies. During his studies, he interned at the European Parliament. He also spent three summers in Klagenfurt (Celovec), working as a journalist for Nedelja, a newspaper of the Slovenian minority. Since then, he has contributed articles to various newspapers.

Over the years, his primary fields of research, teaching, and writing have included minority law and policies, migration law and policies, the status of Slovenians abroad and minorities in Slovenia, contemporary migration trends, brain circulation, and interethnic integration. He also occasionally works as an international adviser in the fields of diaspora and minority policies. He regularly visits Slovenian communities worldwide. In recent years, he has lectured and conducted research at Harvard University – Center for European Studies, Santa Clara University, Cleveland State University, Alfred University, Michigan State University, and Iowa State University in the USA, as well as at Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires and Pädagogische Hochschule Kärnten in Klagenfurt.

He is the author of four books, including the research monograph Resia: A Valley and Its People Between Slovenian, Italian, and Its Own Identity, as well as numerous scientific articles and papers. Between 2019 and 2021, he led a research project titled “Mitigating the Consequences of Brain Drain and Strengthening the Mechanism of Brain Circulation”, and from 2022 to 2024, he directed the research project “Digital Transformation of the Slovenian Emigrant Community in the United States of America and Canada”.