Maryland Bosnia and Herzegovina Exchange Council (MBHEC) and the Institute for Development Impact (I4DI) participated in the scientific conference “Social Sciences and Humanities in the Face of the Challenges of the 21st Century” (DHS 2025), held on 12 December 2025 at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tuzla.
Within the Scientific Forum; Plenary A1 “Bridges of Knowledge; Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Scientific Community Abroad”, Dr. Emir Nurkić Kačapor, delivered a presentation entitled “Researcher Mobility and Interdisciplinary Partnerships in Light of New Policies of the U.S. Academic Community”. He underlined that the year 2025 has brought increased instability in research funding and international education programs in the United States, making smartly designed researcher mobility and interdisciplinary collaboration more important than ever.
The talk emphasized three core elements that U.S. universities and foundations increasingly look for: interdisciplinary teams that bridge technology, public policy, social sciences and other fields; tangible and measurable outputs such as publications, pilots, tools or policy recommendations; and reliable institutional partners with clear roles, plans and administrative capacity. Emir Nurkić Kačapor highlighted that Bosnia and Herzegovina can offer globally relevant expertise in areas such as social cohesion and post‑conflict recovery, public health, local climate risk, digitalization and the application of new technologies in the public sector, and that the Bosnian diaspora can serve as a research asset when systematically connected to home institutions.
In this context, the University of Tuzla was invited to nominate its representatives to take part in the civil cooperation program between the State of Maryland and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a particular focus on building long‑term partnerships among universities, civil society and local communities. Through the joint work of MBHEC and I4DI, the aim is to use concrete projects, researcher exchanges and institutional networks to build sustainable “bridges of knowledge” between Bosnia and Herzegovina, the United States and the wider international scientific community.
