Vjekoslav Perica

Who is Vjekoslav Perica?

Vjekoslav Perica is a Croatian historian, journalist and writer who specializes in the modern history of religions in the former Yugoslavia.

In his youth, Perica was a talented basketball player who was a member of Jugoplastika's first team, but ultimately found academic pursuit more important than his sports career. He graduated from the Faculty of Law in Split in 1980.

From 1985 to 1990 Perica was employed as the secretary of the government's Committee for Relations with Religious Communities. From 1988 to 1991 he wrote a column in Nedjeljna Dalmacija called "Religion and Politics", and interviewed virtually all religious leaders in the former Yugoslavia.

After being fired from his job in 1990, Perica went to the United States where he obtained M.Sc. in political science and history, and Ph.D. in history, all from the University of Minnesota. His Ph.D. thesis, "Religious revival and ethnic mobilization in Yugoslavia, 1965-1991: A history of the Yugoslav religious question from the reform era to the civil war", won him awards from both the United States Institute of Peace and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. From 1999 to 2007 he worked as a visiting lecturer on a number of American universities.