Bio
Vladislav Lilić is a historian of modern Europe whose research focuses on law, sovereignty, state formation, and international order in the nineteenth-century Balkans. His current book project, Empire of States: Law and the Making of Modern Sovereignty in Ottoman Europe, 1830–1878, examines how the autonomous principalities of Serbia and Montenegro took shape within the legal architecture of empire. It argues that modern sovereignty in Ottoman Europe emerged through conflicts over jurisdiction, property, borders, subjecthood, and the meaning of “civilized" rule within a layered imperial order.
Lilić’s broader research examines the relationship between empire, nationalism, and international law in southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean. His ongoing work includes projects on Serb consular state-building in Ottoman Macedonia and on provincial constitutionalism and international ordering in post-1878 Ottoman Europe. His recent work includes “‘Sever not their heads’: Rebellion, Captivity and the Laws of War on the Ottoman–Montenegrin Frontier, 1853–1862,” published in Slavonic & East European Review. At FIU, he teaches modern European, Ottoman, legal, and international history.