American political scientist
Sabrina Petra Ramet (born 26 June 1949) is an American academic, educator, editor and journalist. She specializes in Eastern European history and politics and is a Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.
In 2008, the historian Dejan Djokić referred to her as "undoubtedly the most prolific scholar of the former Yugoslavia writing in English".
Personal life.
Assigned male at birth, Sabrina Ramet was born in London, and is of Austrian and Spanish descent. She moved to the United States at age 10. She became a US citizen in 1966 at age 17. She served in the United States Air Force from 1971 to 1975 and was stationed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. While stationed in Germany, she worked for the base newspaper, as a staff writer and later as editor. In 1973, she was a sergeant.
In December 1990, she started living as a woman and began using the name Sabrina. Ramet lived in England, Austria, Germany, Croatia, and Serbia before joining the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2001, when she settled in Norway. She continues to travel for her research in Eastern European history and politics, in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Poland.
Education.
Ramet was educated at Stanford University (A.B., 1971), the University of Arkansas (M.A., 1974), and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She earned her PhD from UCLA in 1981.
Career and major publications.
In addition to the current position as professor of political science at Norwegian University of Science and Technology since 2001, Ramet is also a senior associate at the Centre for the Study of Civil War as well as a research associate at the Science and Research Centre in Koper, Slovenia. She has written more than 90 journal articles and contributed chapters to various scholarly collections. She is the author of 12 scholarly books and has been editor of 35 scholarly books. She writes in her native English, but her books appear in Bulgarian, Danish, German, Italian, Japanese, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Serbocroatian, Slovenian, and Spanish. Her translation of Viktor Meier's book, "Wie Jugoslawien verspielt wurde", was published by Routledge in July 1999 in English as "Yugoslavia: A History of Its Demise".
One of Ramet's early books, "Whose Democracy? Nationalism, Religion, and the Doctrine of Collective Rights in Post-1989 Eastern Europe" (1997), was reviewed in "Terrorism and Political Violence". Her 2006 book, "The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005", was reviewed in "The American Historical Review", "Foreign Affairs", "East European Politics and Societies" and "The Journal of Modern History". In 2008, historian Dejan Djokic called Ramet "undoubtedly the most prolific scholar of the former Yugoslavia writing in English".
Debate.
In 2007, Serbian sociologist, historian and writer, Aleksa Đilas, sparked a debate between himself and two authors, Ramet and John R. Lampe, by publishing a critique of "the academic West" in general, and Ramet's "Thinking About Yugoslavia" and Lampe's "Balkans into Southeastern Europe" books in particular.
In response professors Lampe and Ramet published a rebuttal of Đilas' critique in the same "Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans" publication, in which both authors addressed his claims, while Ramet disputed his characterizations.
References.
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