11 April 2022 - The secondary school in Vela Luka on the southern island of Korčula has been chosen along with another nine Croatian secondary schools for participation in a European Union youth project.

The project, called "The Future of Europe: the European Year of Youth", was launched by Croatian member of the European Parliament Predrag Fred Matić and lasts until the end of this year. It involves over 4,300 Croatian secondary school students, who will raise key issues faced by their communities and propose solutions.

In addition to Vela Luka, secondary schools in Vukovar, Čakovec, Velika Gorica, Split, Slavonski Brod, Konjščina, Pula, Petrinja and Krk also participate in the project.

Participation in this project is of special importance to a small island school such as the one in Vela Luka, which has about 120 students and 28 teachers.

"This project will give our students a chance to speak about their problems and get actively involved in EU decision making processes," the Head of Vela Luka Secondary School, Ofelija Dragojević, told Hina.

The school, established in 1952, provides four-year programs in humanities and social sciences and in economics, as well as three-year programs for chefs and ship engineers. In 2021, it was chosen for the fourth time as a European Parliament Ambassador School.

The participating students will work on topics relating to education, unemployment, culture, sports, politics, ecology and problems faced by vulnerable groups among young people. Each school will focus on a specific area, and the students in Vela Luka will deal with cultural and sports activities for young people. They will identify key problems and discuss them first with individuals, organisations and institutions in their local community and then with those at the EU level.

The students in Vela Luka will present specific problems faced by young people on their island, in particular the lack of cultural and sports amenities and activities with which they could fill their free time, as well as connectivity.

More information about the European Year of Youth is available at https://europa.eu/youth/year-of-youth_hr.

July 19, 2021 - With many options for scientific research, Croatian scientists researched radicalism and presented their findings at the conference hosted by the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP).

Croatian scientists continue to make a global impact with their research. As Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute informed on its website, Ph.D. candidate Tomislav Pavlović participated in the 44th annual International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) conference that occurs from July 11-13.

As listed by the official website of the Society, ISPP is an interdisciplinary organization representing all fields of inquiry concerned with exploring the relationships between political and psychological processes. Nonprofit, scientific, educational, and non-partisan.

„Members include psychologists, political scientists, psychiatrists, historians, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, as well as journalists, government officials, and others. The Society is international, with members from all regions of the world: the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa“, says ISPP.

Pavlović participated in two panels of this year's online conference.

„Within excellently moderated and visit panel “The Process of Radicalization II“, Tomislav Pavlović presented findings of research regarding roles of dark personalities character traits and inequality in predicting radicalized intentions“, stated Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute.

The research, Pavlović co-authored with a senior scientific adviser at the Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Renata Franc is published as part of the EU Horizon DARE project.

DARE stands for Dialogue About Radicalisation and Equality and its goal is to „significantly increase understanding of why and how young people become radicalised and our capacity to effectively counter-radicalisation“. The project started on May 1 2017 and it will be concluded this October.

„Despite multiple studies providing evidence of subjective inequality and dark personality traits as predictors of extremism, their interactive effect on extremism has not been studied. As such interactions are implied in multiple models of radicalization, this research was focused on testing them. While Study 1 (N = 279), based on a convenient student sample, established the interaction between perceived group relative socio-political deprivation and Dark Triad traits in the prediction of support for political violence, Study 2 (N = 461), based on a quota sample, specified it in the context of radicalized intentions: emotional component of group deprivation (anger, contempt, and disgust) interacts with the Dark Tetrad in the prediction of radicalized but not activist intentions, even after correcting for social desirability bias. Their combined explanatory power (up to 25% of explained variance) robustly confirms the role of individual dispositions and (responses to the perception of) contextual factors, as well as their interactions, in radicalization“, says the abstract of Pavlović's and Franc's research.

„Additionally, as part of „Authoritarianism, Ethnocentrism, and Social Dominance“ panel, Tomislav Pavlović presented findings of psychometric, intercultural check of the relatively new orientation scale for social dominance (SDO-7) (Factor structure of the short form of Social dominance orientation questionnaire (SDO7) on youth samples from multiple countries; examined by dana gathered by questionnaires of pupils from nine countries as part of the CHIEF project (Cultural Heritage and Identities of Europe’s Future)“, added Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute.

Along with other researches conducted within the CHIEF project, Pavlović's participation in the conference is one more beautiful instance of Croatian scientific excellence. This shows Croatian scientists are stepping out as equals with their international colleagues presenting findings which, when it comes to social sciences, may not only help solve problems Croatia is facing but the world in general.

When it comes to youth, learn more about what Croatia can offer to kids and families on our TC page.

For more about science in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

June 23, 2021 - Youth Work in Flux Conference held in Rijeka mid-June saw scholars, researchers, scientists, and professionals discuss and present their work in the domain of youth work.

With more and more concern invested in youth in Croatia (both academically and professionally), June 15-17 saw Rijeka as the host of the conference titled „Youth work in flux: an academic point of view on youth work training and education“.

The conference was organized by the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb and partners: University of Rijeka and Slovenian University of Ljubljana held as part of the Erasmus + project Supporting Evidence-based Education of Youth Workers.

„Our aim is to strengthen the epistemic community of scholars and researchers in the domain of youth work, while instigating an academic debate on existing knowledge in the domain, defining further topics that need to be explored, and investigating the possibilities of co-creating the knowledge with actors from the community“, said the official website of the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb as the page was inviting „all interested scholars, researchers, and doctoral students to submit their abstracts and contribute to shedding light on this proliferating topic“.

Among such researchers, Dr. Marko Mustapić and Dino Vukušić from the Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute stood out. The two researchers presented results of the research „Youth Activism and Sport: Legacy of Dražen Petrović and ‘heritage in the making’“. Their ethnographic research investigated „Mi smo Cibona“ (We Are Cibona) association, centered around Cibona, a famous Zagreb basketball club, and how the youth in that association respond to the famous Croatian sportsman Dražen Petrović – how they perceive, interpret, or reinterpret Petrović's material and symbolic heritage and how they feel about basketball club today and what is the future of the association's activism.

The research was done as part of a project called CHIEF - Cultural Heritage and Identities of European Future done in the Horizont2020 frame.

As Ivo Pilar Social Research Institute informs, CHIEF started on May 1, 2018, with a budget of 4,58 million euros. The concept was split into 10 working packages challenging both in theory and in practice, but with a goal to conduct field research on the population 14-25 years of age, to see what we can perceive about Europe's identity in the future as these new generations develop into social and political participants.

With such conferences and various projects that aim to empower youth to stay in Croatia, it is evident that the importance of youth is finally recognized in the country. But, will that be enough to engage politicians to offer more things for the youth and stop the exodus of young Croatians from the country is yet to be revealed by future events.

When it comes to youth, learn more about what Croatia can offer to kids and families on our TC page.

For more about science in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.