November activities on the Future Studies program

The implementation of classes and lectures on the Future Studies educational program continues diligently.

In the Knowledge for the Future module, this month we started with a lecture on an extremely important topic that is still current - the Ukrainian-Russian war. The lecture was held by Jelica Kurjak, former ambassador of the Republic of Serbia to the Russian Federation. A discussion was started on what are the causes of Russian aggression against Ukraine, what the parties gain and what they lose, how the international community behaves during the conflict, as well as how the conflict itself affects international relations.
Dejan Šoškić, professor at the Faculty of Economics and former governor of the National Bank of Serbia, spoke about the basic principles of banking and finance. There were talks about how the financial market and lending work, as well as what blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are and whether they have a future.
The conversation about the importance of political cartoons for democracy was initiated by the lecture of the associate professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences, Aleksandra Krstić. Students had the opportunity to see different cartoons, both by American authors and domestic ones, and exchange their opinions on how they affect the perception of public opinion, and how important they are.
Taking into account the importance that the elections in the United States of America have for the whole world, we also hosted assistant professors at the Faculty of Political Sciences, Stevan Nedeljković and Milan Krstić, who gave a lecture on the topic "The strategic importance of the 2024 American elections for the future of international relations". The lecture discussed the international context in which the campaign for the US presidential election is being conducted, the key candidates, as well as the influence of foreign policy topics on the election of the president.
The last November lecture on this module was dedicated to a completely different topic - the future of the IT industry. The students were able to hear first-hand how the IT community in Serbia works from Nikola Puzović, who works in the Microsoft development center. Nataša Nikolov, an alumna of the Program and a long-time mentor, joined the lecture.

Activities continued on the Future Skills module. In addition to regular workshops with Vladimir Pavićević, where participants have the opportunity to improve their public performance, students were able to learn from Nikola Ristic how to manage an Instagram account, that is, how best to present themselves on social networks. Aleksandar Miladinović, journalist and editor of the BBC's Serbian service, emphasized the importance of media presentation skills in his lecture. Students received advice on how to create messages and convey them because of the importance of attracting the audience's attention and keeping it.

At psychological workshops with Jana Stojanović, students dealt with conflict resolution styles, as well as issues of self-criticism and self-compassion.