Jovana Diković

Dr. Jovana Diković joined CCRS in September 2021, and as of January 2022 acts as head of Sustainable Development and Inclusive Growth.

Jovana Diković is an economic anthropologist. After graduating with a BA degree in Social Anthropology and an MA in Political Sciences from the University of Belgrade, she moved to Zurich to pursue a PhD in Economic Anthropology at the University of Zurich. She further internationalized her education, working as a postdoctoral researcher at the universities of Ottawa and Pittsburgh. In 2021, she joined CCRS as a scientific collaborator and, as of 2022, she has been working as Head of Sustainable Development and Inclusive Growth. At CCRS, she conducts research, writes and teaches on topics related to development economics, including rural and agricultural development, post-conflict development, poverty reduction, emerging markets and entrepreneurship. Her research has primarily focused on the Balkans, but as of 2025, she has expanded her regional focus to include the DRC.

She is the author of two books «The Laissez-Faire Peasant: Post-Socialist Rural Development in Serbia (UCL Press)» and «Why Development Cooperation Projects Fail: A Case Study of Post-Conflict Kosovo» (Springer Nature, forthcoming). She is also the editor of a collection of papers entitled Sustainability of Development Assistance: Problems, Prospects and Perspectives (CCRS).

Jovana regularly teaches as an external lecturer at the Universities of St Gallen and Fribourg. Her opinion pieces have been featured in numerous international outlets such as Mises Wire, Schweizer Monat, Berliner Gazette, Al Jazeera, and Serbian outlets such as Radar Magazine, Danas, NIN, and Katalaksija.