Assist. Prof. Janja Mikulan, PhD

Lecturer

Contact hours: By agreement

Contact: janja.mikulan@fuds.si

Field of Research

The research focus covers the fields of political science and (political) sociology. It focuses on the study of key contemporary security phenomena, with a particular emphasis on radicalisation, violent extremism, and terrorism. Within this framework, her work includes an in-depth analysis of (collective) trauma and extends to broader issues of global security and the challenges of globalisation. In her research, she applies a combination of advanced methodological approaches, primarily focusing on case studies and qualitative comparative research designs, which enable a comprehensive understanding of complex social and political processes.

janja mikulan fudš

Curriculum vitae:

In 2009 she has graduated in Political Science (programme Policy Analysis and Public Administration) and gained a master’s degree in Global Studies both at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana. During her studies she did an internship at the Research Department of the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia. She continued to gain her work experience both in academia as well as in non-governmental sector. Between 2010 and 2012 she was a Teaching Assistant at the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Ljubljana) and at the Faculty of Administration (University of Ljubljana). She was also an intern and a project manager at SLOGA, platform of Slovenian non-governmental organizations for development cooperation and humanitarian aid, where she was particularly focused on international humanitarian aid. She continued with development and humanitarian work in Kenya and Burundi, where she actively participated in the humanitarian-cartographic project, under the initiative of the EU Aid Volunteers (2012-2013). She upgraded her knowledge and experience as an intern at the Slovenian office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In the period 2014-2019, she worked as a Young Researcher at the School of Advanced Social Studies in Nova Gorica – SASS (the program was funded by the Public Research Agency of the Republic of Slovenia). During this period she also completed two Erasmus+ trainings in Lebanon (2016, 2017), and in 2018 she received a prestigious Fulbright scholarship, which enabled her to conduct research in the United States (Temple University, Philadelphia). In April 2020 she successfully defended her doctoral dissertation entitled “Towards framework conditioning divergent regimes across Middle East and North Africa: navigating between authoritarianism and democratization ” and acquired the title of “ Doctor of Science in Sociology ”. She is currently employed at the School of Advanced Social Studies in Nova Gorica – SASS where she is engaged in pedagogical work at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, as well as research projects of the faculty.

She is project coordinator of projects “The EU as a global actor in a fragmented and traumatised world – EU-GlobalAct” (2023 – 2026; Jean Monnet Module funded by the EU) and the basic postdoctoral project “Trauma perspective on vulnerability to radicalization (2023-2025; ARIS).