Milorad Ekmečić

He was born in Prebilovci, municipality of Čapljina, on October 4, 1928, to father Ilija and mother Kristina. He completed primary school (four grades) in Čapljina and high school in Mostar in 1947, with exemption from the final exam.

He enrolled in the study of general history at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Zagreb, where he graduated in 1952. At the same university, he defended his doctoral dissertation titled "Uprising in Bosnia 1875–1878" in 1958. That same year, he was elected as an assistant at the newly established Department of History at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo, but due to illness, he took up his duties a few months later.

He spent a year conducting research in archives in Zagreb, Belgrade, and Zadar, as well as several months in Vienna. After specializing at Princeton University in the United States in 1960/61, he returned and continued working at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo until 1992. As a visiting professor, he taught at the University of Ann Arbor in Michigan and at the University of Kansas. He was the president of the Society of Historians of Bosnia and Herzegovina.