Laslo Sekelj born in Subotica

Subotica

Subotica is a city and municipality in northern Serbia, in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina...

, Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

.

Laslo Sekelj studied philosophy, political science, and sociology at the Universities of Belgrade

Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...

, Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, and Zagreb

Zagreb

Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Zagreb

University of Zagreb

The University of Zagreb is the biggest Croatian university and the oldest continuously operating university in the area covering Central Europe south of Vienna and all of Southeastern Europe...

 (1983). He published a number of studies and articles on inter-ethnic tensions and Jewish identity

Jewish identity

Jewish identity is the objective or subjective state of perceiving oneself as a Jew and as relating to being Jewish. Under the broader definition, the Jewish identity does not depend on whether or not a person is regarded as a Jew by others, or by an external set of religious, or legal, or...

 in Yugoslavia. For many years he was a senior research fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory at the University of Belgrade

University of Belgrade

The University of Belgrade is the oldest and largest university of Serbia.Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac-based departments into a single university...

. As a member of the dissident “Praxis” group he was denied the right to teach.

He specialized in the study of Yugoslav self-management. In his major book, published in English: “Yugoslavia: the Process of Disintegration”, he analyzed the different stages in the development of self-management and its demise.
Another area of his specialization was the study of anarchism

Anarchism

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

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He directed a long-term project devoted to comparative aspects of the transformation process of the formerly Communist European countries.

In recent years he was a senior research fellow of the Belgrade Institute for European Studies, and spent several years as an Humboldt Foundation

Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation is a foundation set-up by the government of the Federal Republic and funded by the German Foreign Office, the Ministry of Education and Research, the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and others for the promotion of international co-operation...

 Research Fellow and Guest-Professor at the University of Göttingen.