In the Footsteps of Conflict and Coexistence: Bosnia and Herzegovina Thirty Years After the Dayton Peace Agreement

Thirty years after the Dayton Peace Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) remains a laboratory of post-conflict governance – peaceful on the surface yet still grappling with deep institutional and social divisions.

For us, students at the University of Tartu’s “Practical Field Research in Conflict Areas” course, this field trip was designed not as a touristic visit, but as an exercise in applied inquiry: to observe how theories of peacebuilding, memory politics, and institutional design manifest in the lived realities of everyday Bosnia and its quest for normalcy amidst contested identities.

Preparation was an essential part of the journey. Weeks before departure, we discussed theoretical frameworks in class, studied the Yugoslav wars, and examined scholarly debates on post-conflict reconstruction. These sessions gave us the intellectual lens to approach what we were about to encounter: a society at peace yet still partitioned by its past. Our preparation thus already required us to anticipate both mentally and intellectually: fieldwork in conflict zones is not about finding answers – it’s about learning to live with complexity.

Our itinerary stretched from Sarajevo to Mostar and Banja Luka, crossing administrative entities and symbolic boundaries. Along the way, we met professors, diplomats, activists, and ordinary citizens – each offering fragments of Bosnia’s unfinished story. One question that guided our inquiry was deceptively simple: What does peace look like when its institutions are built to preserve division?

Read full story about the fieldwork of our International Relations and Regional Studies students on the Defacto states research unit website.