About us

Branko Sekulić, president
Zoran Grozdanov, vice president
Zinka Mujkić, general secretary

Branko Sekulić received his master’s degree at the Theological Faculty “Matthias Flacius Illyricus” in Zagreb, Croatia (2011), another at the Ecumenical Institute of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine (2017), and earned a certificate in peace education from the Center for Peace Studies in Zagreb (2009). He obtained his doctoral degree at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany (2020), and achieved habilitation in Systematic Theology at the same faculty (2024). He has been a lecturer at the University Center for Protestant Theology “Matthias Flacius Illyricus” in Zagreb (since 2017) and an Adjunct Assistant Professor there (since 2023), president of the Institute for Theology and Politics (since 2023), director of the Academy for Theology and Politics (since 2023), coordinator of the theological program of the Festival of Alternatives and the Left in his hometown of Šibenik (since 2014), a visiting professor and researcher at the Stanford Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (2024), a visiting scholar at the Institute for Eastern Church Studies and Ecumenism at the University of Münster (2025), and an external associate with the Templeton Religion Trust on the project “The Forms of Pluralism in the Balkans” (since 2025). He is the author of the books Ethnoreligiosity in the Contemporary Societies of the Former Yugoslavia: The Veils of Christian Delusion (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Press, 2022); Krabulja kršćanskog vulgarizma: Fenomen etnoreligijantstva na prostoru bivše Jugoslavije (Rijeka: Ex libris, 2023); The Theology of the Ethnocultural Empathic Turn: Getting to the Core of Sacralized Crime (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Fortress Press, 2024), nominated for the 2026 Grawemeyer Award in Religion; and Prodor u srce sakraliziranog zločina (Belgrade: XX vek, 2024), recipient of the “Krunoslav Sukić” Book of the Year Award 2024/25. He is the lead co-editor of the special issue of the journal Political Theology titled “Balkan Political Theology” (27/3, 2026). He is also the author of numerous international works in the field of political theology, among the most recent of which are: “Trudging Through The Balkan Mordor: The Phenomenon of Ethnoreligiosity in the Former Yugoslavian Context” (Political Theology, 2026); the chapter “Sacralizing Ethnos: ‘Conversions’ to Ethnoreligiosity in Eastern Europe,” published in the volume Conversions in Central and Eastern Europe: The Politics of Religion and Nonreligion across the 20th Century (Routledge, 2026); and “Balkan Theological Gordian Knot: Post-Yugoslav Territory in the Rough Embrace of Ethnonationalism and Religion” (Political Theology, 2025).

Zoran Grozdanov is an assistant professor at the University Center for Protestant “Theology Matthias Flacius Illyricus”, University in Zagreb. He was a guest researcher at the University of Tübingen (where he did his Ph.D. under the supervision of Jürgen Moltmann) and the University of Münster. Also, he is an editor at the publishing house Ex libris, Rijeka, Croatia, where he, among other publications, edits Selected works of Miroslav Volf. During the past decade, he has initiated and coordinated a national campaign to abolish VAT taxes on charity food donations. He was the initiator and the editor of the Croatian edition of the International Journal of Theology Concilium (2010-2018). He recently published the book Domovina slikana tamjanom: teologija nacionalnog identiteta [Homeland Painted with Incense: Theology of National Identity], Ex libris, Rijeka, 2023.; “From Catholic Church to Religious-Populist Movements: Religious Populism Coming of Age in Croatia”, in Gionathan lo Mascolo (ed.), The Christian Right in Europe: Movements, Networks and Denominations, Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld, 2023, “From Incarnation to Identity: The Theological Background of National-Populist Politics in the Balkans”, in Joshua Ralston and Ulrich Schmiedel (eds.), The Spirit of Populism: Political Theologies in Polarized Times, Brill, Leiden, 2021. Also, he has edited the volume Balkan Contextual Theology: An Introduction, London-New York: Routledge, 2022.

Zinka Mujkić received her master’s degree at the Theological Faculty “Matthias Flacius Illyricus” in Zagreb, Croatia (2014). Published articles “Mystical Thought in Islam (Tasawwuf or Sufism)” in Spectrum (Nr. 3-4, 2009), “Letter on the occasion of the reprinting of the Glagolitic New Testament from 1562/1563”, the first complete Croatian translation of the New Testament (Interview with Alojz Jembrih) in Spectrum (Nr. 3-4, 2009), participated in the postgraduate course “Spirituality, Religiosity, and Secular Lives: Feminist Challenges for Theory and Practice with Paper: „Tertullian and Women” (Inter-University Centre Dubrovnik, 2009). She gained non-formal education in the Centre for Peace Studies (Zagreb, 2015), in the Ecumenical Women’s Initiative: program “Both Believers and Citizens” (training in human dignity and the anthropology of women in the Christian-Islamic tradition and modern context of human rights, Livno, BiH, 2015), and FERškola Feminism and religion (Gender, religion and peacebuilding and Religion and gender-based violence, online courses, 2022). As the governor of the social cooperative Taste of Home, a culinary-cultural research project fostering the economic empowerment of refugees and migrants (2015 – 2018), she led a series of innovative initiatives. Continuing her contribution to the community, she extended her impact as the manager of socially beneficial projects, , such as those at the Public Open University Zagreb, the largest Croatian non-profit adult education institution (2020–2023), as well as at the Jesuit Refugee Service – Croatia and the City Society of the Red Cross Zagreb (2023–2024). She is currently engaged with UNHCR Croatia, where she works on promoting economic inclusion and improving the living conditions of refugees in Croatia.