Function: Coordinator of Working Group for Spatial Analysis and Territorial Cohesion

Štefan Čok was born in Trieste, Italy, on 4th of July 1983. Trieste, his born town, has also a Slovenian name, Trst, and a German name, Triest, that proves the strong intercultural heritage of the area where he was born. This heritage influenced also his life and his identity, as he is a member of the Slovenian minority in Italy.

He studied at the Slovene high school in Trieste and after that he graduated in Contemporary History at University of Trieste, where he also achieved his Master’s degree in 2008. After the Master’s degree he decided to continue his studies in Slovenia, where he is currently finishing his PhD in History of Europe and the Mediterranean at the University of Primorska in Koper, a city located on the other side of the Italian–Slovenian border, but just ten kilometres from Trieste. His interest in Cross–border cooperation is a consequence of a cross–border life: Štefan’s daily experience in a multilingual and intercultural environment is the best proof of how the border exists only to be crossed or, if possible, cancelled.

During Štefan’s PhD he tried to promote some kind of cross–border cooperation between the students of history of the border area: he believes that the tragedies of XXth century left deep wounds in the consciousness of the inhabitants and the historians have a great role and responsibility in dealing with different memories of the same events. In 2012 the Trieste–Koper section of International Students of History Association, of which he was the President and one of the founders (the unique cross–border section of the organization in Europe) held the “Incontri adriatici–Jadranska srečanja–Jadranski susreti–Adriatic meetings”, a seminar of history students from the Adriatic universities of Croatia, Italy and Slovenia.

In the last years Štefan collaborates with the Slori–Slovene Research Institute in Trieste, the research organization of the Slovenians in Italy: the Institute puts a great attention to the improvement of the relations between the inhabitants of border area, also with the realization of cross–border projects: he participated to the project “Jezik–Lingua”, with a research about the learning of the Slovene as second–foreign language by the adult population of Friuli Venezia Giulia region and to the project “Lex”, with workshops for the high school students about the relations between majorities and minorities in the northern Adriatic area. From the autumn of 2015 he also collaborates with the Historical Section of the Slovene National and Study Library in Trieste.

In 2010, 2012 and 2015 he participated at the AEBR Youth Forum; in 2015 he also participated at Europelab, the Youth Forum of Europe–Russia civil society Forum.