The DINARKVIR project addressed a critical gap in understanding the historical presence and social acceptance of gender and sexual diversity in the Western Balkans. Current scholarship on queer histories in the region has predominantly focused on modern decriminalization efforts and contemporary LGBTQ+ rights movements, inadvertently reinforcing the misconception that gender and sexual diversity is a recent, imported, or non-traditional phenomenon. This perspective overlooked the limited historical evidence that does exist of non-heteronormative practices and gender-nonconforming individuals. The project specifically examined two understudied social institutions present in traditional communities of the Dinaric Alps and neighboring regions: tobelijas (individuals assigned one gender at birth but socialized in a different gender role, often translated as “sworn virgins”) and ritual brotherhood/sisterhood (pobratimi/posestrime), homosocial relationships that provided social recognition and legal protection, often with a homoerotic component. Research into these two phenomena was hampered by early twentieth-century scholars who, influenced by their own cultural biases and emerging heteronormative frameworks, sanitized, ignored, or misrepresented these practices in ethnographic accounts.
The project set four objectives:
O1. To break new theoretical ground on the nature of gender and sexual diversity in the region by building a new conceptual framework, acknowledging the limitations of terms such as “homosexual,” “gay,” and “queer,” while recognizing non-heteronormative forms of life.
O2. To apply the conceptual framework from O1 to analyze the role of scholars who explored tobelijas and ritual brothers/sisters, and to examine the historical transformation of gender, sex, and same-sex attraction in the context of modernization.
O3. To identify, examine in detail, and reinterpret the communal roles of tobelijas and ritual brothers/sisters as queer performances and practices in specific communities through concrete cases.
O4. To train the researcher in digital-humanities methods, with a focus on affordable and efficient document collection and digitalization.
Scientific Impact: The project identified important cases involving tobelijas and ritual brothers/sisters who were visible and integrated within their communities, challenging assumptions about historical marginalization. The research revealed that processes of modernization and academic knowledge production, rather than traditional community values, were often responsible for the erasure of gender and sexual diversity from historical records. The fellowship resulted in three peer-reviewed publications, seven international conference presentations, and three co-organized academic panels. The researcher taught four university courses, delivered two invited lectures, and significantly expanded their international research network.
