Pursuing the Albanian Dream: language and nation in Kosovo, by Dr Justin Elliott

Dear Anglo-Albanian Association member, friends

We are glad to announce another AAA talk, which will be given by Dr Justin Elliott  on Monday 10 May via Zoom, starting at 6pm London time.

Dr Elliott received his PhD at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, and is a long-standing member of the Anglo-Albanian Association. He was a member of the management of Kosova Aid, a charity set up to co-ordinate the response of the Albanian community in the UK to the state of siege in Kosovo in the 1990s. He also served as a member of the British delegation to the UNHCR Humanitarian Evacuation Programme in Macedonia during the Kosovo war. Since the war, he has been pursuing an academic career.  From August 2021, he will be a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation working on video testimony of Albanian political prisoners during the regime of Enver Hoxha.

The title of his talk is "Pursuing the Albanian Dream:  language and nation in Kosovo", and Dr Elliot describes it as follows:

"What my talk would concern is the changing status of the Albanian language in Kosovo during the Yugoslav period and why in 1968 Albanians in Yugoslavia abandoned their own attempts to form a standard language in favour of one developed in Albania which bore little relation to what was spoken in Kosovo. As the talk will demonstrate, the reasons for this had much less to do with linguistics than with a growth in Albanian national consciousness in Kosovo during this period. Since the war, the perceived success or failure of the Albanian standard language in Kosovo has led to a debate about whether the standard language should be changed which is closely linked to debates about Kosovo's relationship with Albania."

Once you have registered, you will find the Zoom details on the registration e-mail.

We look forward to welcoming you on 10 May.

Best wishes,

Stephen Nash CMG

Chairman

Anglo-Albanian Association