On May 16, 2022, the election process for the Executive Board of the South East European Studies Association (SEESA) in the USA closed, from which, the pedagogy of contemporary Albanian and Foreign Literature of the 20th century at the Faculty of Education, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Bavjola Shatro was reconfirmed for a second 4-year term as President of SEESA. This makes him one of the second-term presidents in the 50-year history of this prestigious academic association, and he is part of this history alongside the honorable names of presidents over the years: Kenneth E. Naylor (The Ohio State University), Cyril E. Black (Princeton University), Joseph L. Conrad, (University of Kansas), Charles Jelavich (Indiana University), Irwin T. Sanders (Boston University), John Treadway, (University of Richmond), Victor Friedman (University of North Carolina), Christina Kramer (University of Toronto), John Leafgren (University of Arizona), Elisabeth Elliott, (Northwestern University), Olga Mladenova (University of Calgary), Catherine Rudin (Wayne State College), etc.
In this mandate, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Shatro will continue to lead projects initiated within the framework of SEESA's activities, as an organization dedicated to scientific research in the field of Southeast European studies.
The conclusion of the first term in this position was crowned with “The 22nd Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature, and Folklore”, held in April of this year at The Ohio State University, in Columbus, USA. At this academic event with a nearly 40-year tradition, SEESA offered two prizes for the best papers presented by participating doctoral students. Of particular importance is the fact that this year's winning papers had the Albanian language and its issues in synchronic and diachronic terms as their primary field of study. The authors of these papers, Rexhina Ndoci, (first place winner) and Clayton Marr (second place winner) are doctoral students in the field of linguistics at The Ohio State University (USA) and were awarded $700 and $600, respectively, as winners of the SEESA Prize 2022.
While Albanian scholars have won SEESA grants over the years, at the start of her second term as President of this academic organization and as Chair of the Academic Grants Council, Prof. Shatro invites UAMD Master's level students in the fields of linguistics, literature, folklore, history, etc., to familiarize themselves with the announcements of this association on its website. www.seesa.org and apply for SEESA Travel Grants. These academic grants, worth a minimum of $500 each, are funding that SEESA provides annually to cover travel and accommodation expenses for Master's and Doctoral level students in Southeast European fields of study who present at conferences organized in various countries around the world.
UAMD students are welcome to apply, presenting their work and UAMD.
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