Based in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina, UNSA can claim to be the cradle of intellectual life in the Balkan state that spent much of the 20th century as part of Yugoslavia.
It still retains much of the library of Huzver-beg, who founded a Muslim madrassah in Sarajevo in 1537, and its affiliates include notable late 19th-century foundations such as the National Museum, the School of Law and the Catholic Seminary. At its foundation in 1949, it took in the existing faculties of medicine and agriculture and forestry, and in the 1970s helped in the formation of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s other universities in Banja Luka, Tuzla and Mostar.
Devastated in the civil war of the 1990s, its facilities are distributed across the city, with five of its 26 faculties and two of its five institutes based in the former Tito barracks. That era also gave rise to its Institute for Research into Crimes against Humanity and International Law. The new Saudi-funded library, which opened in 2023, is reckoned the largest postwar investment in university infrastructure in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The university has around 27,000 students on its roll, and in 2020 awarded around 5,000 degrees. Most are privately accommodated, with around 2,000 places in university dormitories in the Novi Grad and Centar districts.
University publications include Pregled, the second oldest magazine in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And the university regularly hosts events such as a 2023 conference on ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina: Constitution and European Union Accession’.
