In her PhD thesis, 'Accommodation of Cultural Diversity in Public Spaces: The Case of Skopje (Macedonia)', Katerina Mojanchevska aimed to understand how do citizens of Skopje in Macedonia perceive practices of accommodation of cultural diversity in public spaces. She looked in at how citizens’ views on how language, ethnicity, religion and collective cultural symbols are legitimized through the physical form and the political, social and symbolic (cultural) value of public spaces in their neighbourhoods.
On 22 May 2018, Katerina Mojanchevska successfully defended her PhD thesis at the International Institute of Social Studies on Accommodation of Cultural Diversity in Public Spaces: The Case of Skopje (Macedonia).
She was particularly interested to find out:
- How the general public understands multiculturalism and how it understands fair and just accommodation of diversity, including citizens` participation in decision-making of the city’s urban space;
- Whether citizens in ethnically mixed neighbourhoods nurture more inclusive practices of recognizing diversity in public spaces and if such neighbourhoods represent a way toward the production of more shared public spaces in a multicultural city;
- How citizens' perception of what is appropriate in regards to representation of diversity in public space and how may inform how the concept of 'the citizen' is constructed;
- How her research could lay the ground for an elaboration of specific principles that provide a framework for governance of diversity within a multicultural city.
Photos and video of the public defence
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