OLBIOS CORRESPONDENT BOSNIA & HERZEGOVINA / AUSTRIA

Samir Beharic was born and raised in the city of Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he attended an ethnically segregated school. He is currently studying Global Studies at the University of Vienna in accordance with the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Program. He received his BA in Media and Communication at the University of Sarajevo, and studied abroad in Germany, Turkey and Italy. He has spent two semesters at the Free University of Berlin as an Erasmus Mundus scholaship holder, and one exchange semester at Ondokuz Mayis University in Samsun, Turkey as a Mevlana scholar. The last semester of his BA studies, Samir spent at the Sapienza University in Rome as an Erasmus+ scholarship holder. Since his high school days, Samir has been engaged in civil society and particularly interested in youth activism and student issues. As a National Representative for the Erasmus Student Network BiH, Samir has openly advocated for several important initiatives regarding education at the University of Sarajevo and other academic institutions nationwide. He was one of the main organizers of the nationwide Erasmus+ protests, which achieved its goals of keeping the Erasmus+ programme available to university students in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As someone who has attended segregated primary school, he is highly involved in fighting ethnic segregation in the Bosnian school education system. Samir has attended numerous international conferences on human rights and minority rights, freedom in the media and fighting hate speech. He has participated in various television, newspaper, and magazine portals to discuss pressing societal and political issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially those related to youth. As a freelance journalist, he has published 50+ articles in newspapers and major news portals around Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad and has also presented at public events such as TEDx.