Dusan Batakovic, 52, a Serbian historian and diplomat, has been handed the most demanding role of his life - to lead the Serbian team at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, in an attempt to dispute the legality of Kosovo’s unilateral proclamation of independence on February 17, 2008.

The Serbian team is composed mostly of legal experts, but having a historian at the helm indicates that the Serbian side might be paying some attention to the deeper causes of the Serb-Albanian disputes and the conflict in Kosovo.

In his academic career, Batakovic has explored those same relationships from Medieval times to the present day, trying to explain the positions of both the Serb and Albanian side in his works...