Dr Edita Stojić-Karanović (30 May 1941 – 5 July 2026) was a Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of International Politics and Economics and one of Serbia’s leading scholars in the field of cross-border and regional cooperation in the Danube region and South-East Europe.
She graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade (1964), where she also earned her Master’s degree in Social and Economic Sciences (1968). She received her PhD in Economic Sciences from the Faculty of Economics, University of Sarajevo, in 1975.
She spent her entire professional career at the Institute of International Politics and Economics, where she was employed from 1968 until her retirement in 2008. Over four decades, she advanced from Junior Research Assistant to the rank of Principal Research Fellow, and from 2007 to 2008 she served as Acting Director of the Institute.
She was a pioneer of research on cross-border and regional cooperation in Serbia. In 1985 she founded the Centre for Neighbouring Countries and Regional Cooperation within the Institute, and in 1989 she launched a project on regional cooperation among researchers in the Danube region. Her most significant professional achievement was the founding of the International Scientific Forum “Danube – River of Cooperation” in 1994, which she chaired for many years and later served as its Honorary President. The Forum organised an annual international conference of the same name. She also launched the scholarly journal Danubius, which published, among other contributions, papers presented at the Forum’s conferences.
Her research focused on cross-border and regional cooperation, the development of the Danube region, and the advancement of international cooperation in South-East Europe. She published more than 200 scholarly papers in national and international journals, thematic volumes and conference proceedings, as well as seven scientific monographs. She published her work in Serbian, English, Hungarian and German.
As a guest lecturer, she taught at the Institute for Economic Diplomacy in Belgrade, the Diplomatic Academy of the University of Budapest, the Diplomatic Academy of the University of Vienna, and in the postgraduate programme of the Fundación José Ortega y Gasset – Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
She was a member of the Committee for Social Sciences of the Hungarian Academic Council of Vojvodina and of the Assembly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Co-Chair of the Danube Civil Society Forum, and Co-Chair of the Operational Team of the project “Border Towns on Border Rivers”.
Alongside her rich academic career, she also pursued literary and artistic work. She published two novels and painted out of love for the art as a lifelong hobby.
Having left an indelible mark on the work of the Institute, on the development of scholarly thought in International Relations and Regional Cooperation, and in the memory of the colleagues with whom she worked, Dr Edita Stojić-Karanović will be remembered as an invaluable pillar of our collective. Her work, vision and dedication became part of the very idea of the Danube as a space of cooperation, understanding and shared progress.