Sara Žerić Đulović Defends Her Dissertation

IOS historian Sara Žerić Đulović successfully defended her dissertation on “Gastarbeiter as Agents of Development in Socialist Yugoslavia” at the University of Regensburg on June 25, 2026. Žerić Đulović has been with the IOS since 2022, when she also began her doctoral project under the supervision of IOS Director Ulf Brunnbauer and Mark Spoerer (Chair of Economic and Social History, co-advisor). 

Her work examines the economic and social effects of labor migration in the countries of origin. Using socialist Yugoslavia as a case study, she investigates why, for example, massive remittances or the establishment of “gastarbeiter factories” in Yugoslavia did not have any long-term positive effects. 

The following publications by Sara Žerić Đulović on this topic have already been published:

• The Tyres of Change: Remittances as a Wheel of Development in Pirot, Serbia. In: Migration and Development, 2024 (more)
• (mit Ulf Brunnbauer) „The gastarbeiters built everything for us.” Migrations, Memories, and Emptiness in the Dalmatian Hinterland. In: Contemporary Southeastern Europe, 11, 1, 2024 (more)