Negotiations were held in Sarajevo, June 27, to make preparations for the international conference titled The Significance and Legacy of the Great War to be held next year commemorating the centennial anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. The Great War and its legacy continue to be subjects of challenging academic debate. To mark its centenary the University of Buckingham, together with its Bosnian partner, the Sarajevo School of Science & Technology have planned an international conference, to take place in Sarajevo 26–28 June 2014, at which scholars from a variety of disciplines will be brought together to consider these themes.

The preparatory meeting was attended by Pál Fodor acting director general of the Research Centre for the Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute of History, Attila Pók deputy director of the Institute of History and Dénes Sokcsevits senior research fellow of the Institute of History.
The organizer, co-organizers and partner institutions of the conference are: Institut za Istoriju, Sarajevo, Bosna i Hercegovina; Hrvatski Institut za Povijest, Zagreb, Hrvatska; Institute of National History, Skopje, Makedonija; Institute for East and Southeast European Studies, Regensburg, Germany; Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Research Centre for Humanities, Budapest, Hungary; Inštitut za Novejšo Zgodovino, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Institute of the Balkan Studies & Centre for Thracology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria, and Center for Southeastern Europe, Graz, Austria. At the preparatory meeting, several decisions were made concerning the location, the program, the main lecturers, and additional events (exhibitions) of the conference. The next preparatory meeting will be held in March, 2014. More than 160 researchers have applied for giving lectures and about 100 – from 26 countries in and out of Europe – have been accepted into the program so far. Additional information on the conference can be seen here.