What’s Happening in Serbia?

On 1^st of November 2024, the collapse of the Novi Sad railway station canopy which killed 16 people - sparked mass student-led protests across Serbia. What began as a mourning vigil has since evolved into a nationwide democratic movement of extraordinary scale and resilience, currently active in over 400 towns and cities.

In a country where political opposition has struggled under President Aleksandar Vučić’s increasingly authoritarian rule and control of state media, students have emerged as the driving force behind a self-organised, decentralised protest system. Their demands for transparency, accountability and the right to public memory have created a new civic space grounded in solidarity and care.

This event will explore the global relevance of these protests, the political and spatial conditions that gave rise to them, and the ways in which a generation is rebuilding democratic practices from the ground up.

Architect and researcher Dubravka Sekulić will be in conversation with AA tutor and filmmaker Marko Milovanović.

This event is open to all and does not require registration.

Dubravka Sekulić is a Programme Lead for MA City Design at the School of Architecture, Royal college of Art in London. Her research explores transformations of contemporary cities, at the nexus between the production of space, laws, and economy. She holds a PhD from gta the Institute for History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zurich (CH) on the relationship between the Yugoslav construction industry and the Non-aligned Movement. She is an author and editor of several books. She co-edited Curatorial Design: A Place Between (lenz, 2025), with Wilfried Kuehn. With filmmaker Ana Hušman she collaborated on a film Don't Trace, Draw!.

Marko Milovanović is an architect, curator and filmmaker. He is the founder of Mylomark Production and Publishing and Free School Of, platforms that celebrate dialogue as a fundamental form of knowledge. A graduate of the Architectural Association, he has worked on award-winning buildings and written widely on politics, culture and urbanism. He was a fellow/resident at the British School at Rome in 2014 and at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2024. Marko’s work has been supported by the British Council and Arts Council Ireland, and his first feature film, Temptation of Influence, will premiere in the summer of 2025. He teaches at the AA, RCA and Oxford Brookes University.

Image: Marko Milovanović

Please get in touch to let us know of any access requirements that you might have and how we can best accommodate these by emailing publicprogramme@aaschool.ac.uk