The Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU participates as an Associated Partner in the international Momentum MSCA Premium Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme and invites researchers to apply for the second call (Call 2).

 

Momentum MSCA is a postdoctoral fellowship programme co-funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), aimed at fostering scientific excellence, international mobility, and the development of independent research careers. As an associated partner, the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU may act as one of the potential host institutions for selected postdoctoral researchers.

 

Selected candidates may be awarded a fellowship for a period of up to 36 months, including mandatory short-term international secondments. The programme offers competitive funding conditions as well as support for professional development, training, and networking within an international research environment.

 

The second call is open from 1 December 2025 to 31 January 2026.
The call is open to outstanding researchers from all research fields who wish to pursue their postdoctoral career in an internationally competitive research environment.

 

Further information on the call, eligibility criteria, and the application procedure is available in the official broschure and on the official programme website: https://momentummsca.mta.hu

 

Researchers are warmly invited to apply.

We cordially invite you to a lecture as part of the Cultural History module, which will be given by Jelena Tešija.

 

Navigating a divided labor universe: Social democrats and communists in the International Co-operative Women’s Guild, 1920s–1960s

 

This lecture examines a complex relationship between social democrats and communists in the International Women’s Co-operative Guild (ICWG), a women-only organization closely connected to the leading co-operative organization, the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA). The ICWG was established in the early 1920s to represent working-class housewives, and it addressed peace issues, co-operative economics, reproductive labor, women’s position in the co-operative movement and women’s civil and political rights. The co-operative movement – including both the ICA and the ICWG – was distinctive in the international labor movement for its ideologically mixed membership and collaboration between social democratic and communist activists throughout the interwar and post-World War II periods. My analysis focuses on three primary dimensions. First, I explore how the ideological split within the international labor movement shaped relationships within the ICWG. Second, I investigate how communists and social democrats, including activists from socialist Yugoslavia, navigated tensions there. Third, I look at how the dynamics between social democrats and communists influenced the ICWG’s relationships and collaborations with the rest of the labor movement.

 

The lecture will be held in English on Thursday, 11 December 2025 at 16:00 in the conference room of the Institute for Cultural and Memory Studies at ZRC SAZU, Trg francoske revolucije 7, 2nd floor, Ljubljana (bell: ZRC SAZU).

Jelena Tešija is a PhD candidate at the Central European University in Vienna and a research affiliate in the ERC Advanced Grant research project ZARAH. Currently, she is participating in a 4-month Erasmus+ traineeship as an external associate at the ZRC SAZU Institute of Culture and Memory Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the gender and labor history of the International Co-operative Women’s Guild (1921–1963). Her research interests include the gender history of the (Yugoslav) co-operative movement, the history of feminisms and women’s labor activisms, and historical perspectives on gender and social reproduction. Before starting her PhD in Comparative History, she covered topics related to labor and women’s movements as a feminist journalist and editor, an independent researcher, and an activist. In 2025, she co-authored a collaborative research monograph titled Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond. A New Transnational History. (London: UCL Press) with her colleagues from the ZARAH project. The book is available in Open Access: https://uclpress.co.uk/book/womens-labour-activism-in-eastern-europe-and-beyond/.

 

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Photo: Conference of the International Co-Operative Women’s Guild in Stockholm in 1927. 1927. U DCX/2/3 Conference File for Stockholm. Hull History Centre, Hull, England.

We cordially invite you to two guest lectures at Anthropology: Understanding World-Making Practices module by Prof. Aleksandar Bošković, PhD. 

 

Wednesday, 10 December 2025 at 3:00 PM:

History of Anthropology as an Anthropological Problem

 

Debates about anthropological research, as well as about individual anthropologists, are profoundly shaped by attempts to understand the discipline’s history and the different trajectories that led to its institutionalization across diverse cultures and social contexts. These attempts unfold amid complex sociopolitical crises that prompt renewed questioning of dominant ideological narratives. Because such interpretations emerge in a specific contemporary moment, they also place actors from the past in the present, often with unexpected consequences. Like any other sphere of human life, anthropology is shaped by particular stories; some of these will be explored in the lecture. Special emphasis will be placed on grounding anthropologists in their own time and place in order to contextualize their work. Such an approach helps illuminate contemporary critiques and underscores the importance of rigorous research in any field. Any attempt to produce a definitive history of anthropology is bound to fail – and ultimately reveals more about its author(s) than about the discipline itself.

 

Thursday, 11 December 2025 at 3:00 PM:

Women in the History of Anthropology: Forgotten or Marginalized?

 

Recent research in the history and theory of anthropology has brought to light new information about the role of women in shaping the discipline. Even in cases where female scholars were crucial for the establishment of anthropology (such as Winifred Hoernlé in South Africa), they were – until very recently – curiously absent from many narratives of the field’s heroic past. Anthropological research is deeply influenced by efforts to understand the discipline’s history and the trajectories that led to its institutionalization across different cultures and social settings. These efforts also unfold during sociopolitical crises, which encourage questioning of dominant ideological narratives. Like any other part of human life, anthropology is shaped by contemporary political discourses – some of which will be examined in the lecture. The lecture will focus on the intellectual trajectories of scholars such as Zora Neale Hurston, Ruth Landes, and Germaine Tillion, and the ways in which they carved out their place in the discipline. Other examples (such as the renaming of Kroeber Hall at UC Berkeley) will also illustrate the – more or less subtle – attempts to erase women from anthropology’s history.

 

Both lectures will be held in English in the Gosposka Hall ZRC SAZU, Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana.

 

Prof. Aleksandar Bošković is a Principal Research Associate at the Institute of Archaeology in Belgrade, Visiting Professor of Social Anthropology at UFRN in Natal (Brazil), and a ULAM Visiting Research Fellow at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. His research interests include the history and theory of anthropology, psychoanalysis, myth and religion, semiotics, ethnicity, nationalism, and gender studies. He has taught at numerous universities across Europe, Africa, and South America. He is co-editor of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures and author or editor of several monographs and edited volumes on anthropology, myth, and religion.

 

Welcome!

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Photo: Professor’s personal archive

Two Lectures by Dr. Debbie Bargallie organized by the ZRC SAZU Institute of Philosophy, in collaboration with the doctoral programme Comparative Study of Ideas and Cultures (Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU) and the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.

 

1. Unmasking the Australian Racial Contract: Indigenous Exploitation and the Racial Regime of Recognition and Reconciliation

 

Monday, 3 November 2025, at 17:00

ZRC SAZU Institute of Philosophy & Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU

Gosposka Hall, Gosposka 16, Ljubljana

 

Beneath Australia’s national narrative of reconciliation lies a “racial contract” built on dispossession, denial, and exploitation.

 

Dr. Debbie Bargallie, Indigenous sociologist and critical race scholar, exposes how this contract is maintained through state recognition and controlled inclusion of Indigenous peoples. Drawing on her award-winning book Unmasking the Racial Contract: Indigenous Voices on Racism in the Australian Public Service, she reveals the racial regime embedded in settler institutions and highlights Indigenous refusal as an assertion of unacknowledged sovereignty.

 

The lecture will also engage with her collaboration with Alana Lentin, author of The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy.

 

Introduced and moderated by: Prof. Dr. Marina Gržinić, ZRC SAZU.

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2. Punjabi Dreaming: Tracing Our Roots and Pathways

 

Tuesday, 4 November 2025, at 16:30

Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana – Department of Sociology

Blue Room, Aškerčeva 2, Ljubljana

 

Using the term “Dreaming” as a broader concept linking ancestry, tradition, and collective memory, this lecture explores identity as a process of being and becoming, following Stuart Hall’s cultural theory.

 

Dr. Bargallie examines how Indigenous and diasporic identities are shaped through rupture, relation, and return—drawing on critical Indigenous studies, critical race theory, and oral, poetic, and genealogical traditions of the Mirasi knowledge-keepers.

 

Her interdisciplinary method combines theoretical analysis, autoethnography, and decolonial research practices, emphasizing oral testimony and community memory as living archives.

 

Introduced and moderated by: Assist. Prof. Dr. Nina Cvar, University of Ljubljana.

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About Dr. Debbie Bargallie

 

Dr. Debbie Bargallie is Associate Professor (Principal Research Fellow) at Griffith University, Honorary Professor at Macquarie University, and Visiting Professor at Universitas Pesantren Tinggi Darul Ulum Jombang (Indonesia).

 

A proud Kamilaroi and Wonnarua woman from New South Wales and descendant of the Jat Langrial Muslim community of the Indian subcontinent, she works at the intersections of race, Indigeneity, and decolonial justice.

 

She chairs the Queensland Muslim Historical Society, directs the Queensland Muslim Cultural and Heritage Centre, and is a researcher at the Centre for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW), where she leads projects on racial literacy at work.

 

Her books include:

• Unmasking the Racial Contract (AIATSIS Press, 2020)
• Critical Racial and Decolonial Literacies: Breaking the Silence (Bristol University Press, 2024, co-edited).

 

(Photo from her personal archive)

We kindly inform you that on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, at 12:00 PM, Adriana Sabo will publicly defend her doctoral dissertation as part of the third-cycle doctoral study programme Comparative Study of Ideas and Cultures, module Cultural History. The title of the dissertation is:

 

“Me Fancy, You Nothing”: Mechanisms of Producing the Empowered Femininity within the Contemporary Balkan Music Industry.

 

Abstract of the dissertation.

 

Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Ana Hofman, PhD

 

Committee: Research Fellow Mojca Kovačič, PhD, Prof. Tanja Petrović, PhD and Asst. Prof. Mojca Piškor, PhD.

 

The defence will be held in English in the Gosposka Hall of the Geographical Museum of GIAM ZRC SAZU, Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana.

 

You are warmly invited!

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Photo source.

We cordially invite you to two guest lectures at Interdisciplinary study of institutions and society in the 21st century module by Prof. Werner Bonefeld, PhD.

 

Tuesday, 3 June 2025 at 4:00 PM:

Money and its Power.

 

The session examines the money form of capitalist wealth. It argues that the satisfaction of needs is secondary to the requirement of making money out of money. In this context, it explores capital as a process of making money out of money, argues that in capitalism time is money, and examines the corporeality of its power. In capitalism money rules – what cannot be exchanged for money is worthless. Why, how, and with what consequence?

 

Wednesday, 4 June 2025 at 4:00 PM:

Economic Compulsion and the Critique of Suffering.

 

Marxʼs overriding concern in his critique of political economy is the conceptualization of the capitalist social relations. He asks, »What is necessary and unavoidable in a given production system?« For Adorno, capitalism is most perceptible where it hurts. He turns towards human suffering as the key to comprehending capitalism’s social reality. My concern is not whether Adorno’s turn towards human suffering is core to his negative dialectics and whether Marx is a logician of the capitalist social nature. My concern is rather in reading what Marx calls his ‘critique of the entire system of economic categories’ through Adorno’s determinate negation. The term economic compulsion’ lends itself to this reading.

 

Both lectures will be held in English in the Gosposka Hall ZRC SAZU, Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana.

 

Werner Bonefeld is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of York, UK, and Adjunct Professor at the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU (Ljubljana, Slovenia). He teaches Contemporary Critical Theory in Western Marxian Thought at the University of Peking. Recent book publications include Adorno and Marx, which he co-edited with Chris O’Kane, and A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion (Routledge, 2023). With Chris O’Kane, he is co-editor of Bloomsbury’s Critical Theory and the Critique of Society series.

 

Welcome!

You are kindly invited to the presentation of doctoral dissertation topics as part of the requirements for Independent Research Work within the third-cycle doctoral study program Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures.

 

On Friday, April 25, 2025, at 4:00 PM, as part of the module Interdisciplinary Study of Institutions and Society in the 21st Century, Krešimir Dabo, PhD will present the topic of his second doctoral dissertation titled:

 

Art and Artists between Clickbait and Criticism: Media Narratives in the Contemporary Digital Environment.

 

(Presentation summary)

 

Proposed supervisor: Full Prof. Dr. Marina Gržinić Mauhler.

Committee: Assist. Prof. Dr. Nina Cvar (Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana), Assist. Prof. Dr. Boris Kern (ZRC SAZU), and Research Fellow Dr. Uroš Kranjc (Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU and ZRC SAZU).

 

The presentation will take place in the conference room of ZRC SAZU, Novi trg 2, 1st floor, Ljubljana.

 

Attendance is mandatory for all students enrolled in the Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures doctoral program as part of fulfilling the requirements for Research Seminar I (Year 1) and Research Seminar II (Year 2). Attendance will be recorded via a sign-in sheet.

 

All other interested parties are also warmly invited!

We invite you to a series of public lectures organised as part of the doctoral module Cultural History by the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU and the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU. The third lecture in the series will feature Ksenija Bogetić Pejović as a guest speaker:

 

Language, conceptualization and collective memory in (perma)crisis.

 

The talk will focus on the role of collective memory in contemporary public discourses of new crises, bringing together frameworks of linguistic metaphor study, crisis communication and memory studies. Across three small case studies, set across different types of political and citizen discourse, the talk looks at instrumentalizations of conflict memory in the (post-)2020 discourses of the ‘new normal’ in former Yugoslav states. The results are used to discuss particular linguistic patterns of a growing militarization of discourse yet paralleled by intense negotiations over collective pasts and futures.

 

The lecture will be held in English on Thursday, April 10, 2025, at 4:00 PM in the meeting room of the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, ZRC SAZU, Trg francoske revolucije 7, 2nd floor, Ljubljana (doorbell: ZRC SAZU).

 

Ksenija Bogetić Pejović is a linguist dealing with interactions of language and the social world at the  Institute of Culture and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU. Her work draws on the traditions of sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics to explore how social identities and ideologies are discursively constructed and sustained, with a particular focus on anglophone and post-Yugoslav societies. Her interests include language ideology, language and nationalism, language, gender and sexuality, youth and digital media, and metaphor.

 

Kindly invited!

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Photo by Gabi Santana

We invite you to a series of public lectures organised as part of the doctoral module Cultural History by the Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU and the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU. The second lecture in the series will feature Tamara Banjeglav as a guest speaker:

 

Peace Process in Collective Memory of the 1990s War in Croatia.

 

This lecture examines how peaceful reintegration of Croatia’s Danube region is today publicly remembered and what role it plays in collective memory of the 1991 – 1995 war in Croatia. In the lecture, I attempt to move the attention from research on the memory of violent events during conflict and to focus on the memory of a peaceful process in the aftermath of violence.

 

The 1990s war in Croatia ended with military operations, but the final integration of the occupied territory into Croatia’s constitutional and legal framework was achieved with a peace process and by signing a peace agreement. However, I argue that, in post-war Croatia, public remembrance of the war includes only violent episodes from the war and marginalises public memory of peace. This has created an impression that alternatives to violence were and are not possible, although a non-violent, peaceful solution proved exactly the opposite by playing a crucial role in ending the conflict. I am to expose the mechanisms behind the marginalization of both the peace agreement and the peace-building process in different memory politics and practices and to show how this cultural continuity of seeing conflicts as necessarily and inevitably violent leads to normalisation of violence in public space and discourse.

 

The lecture will be held in English on Thursday, 13 March 2025, at 16:00, in the meeting room of ZRC SAZU (1st floor, Novi trg 2, Ljubljana).

 

Tamara Banjeglav is a research associate at the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She holds the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions ERA fellowship, in the framework of which she is conducting research on the project “Time is (not) on my side: Remembering victims of slow violence in a post-conflict and post-disaster setting”. She has received her PhD degree from the University of Graz, Austria. Her research interests fall within the fields of memory studies, peace and conflict studies, nationalism studies, and transitional justice, particularly in the post-Yugoslav space.

 

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Photo by Polina Tankilevitch

We kindly inform you that on Thursday, 12 December 2024, at 1 PM, as part of the doctoral study programme Comparative Studies of Ideas and Cultures, Cultural History module, Vita Zalar will publicly defend her doctoral dissertation titled:

 

Anti-Roma Racism and Punitive Governance in the Habsburg and Yugoslav Monarchies, 1848–1941.

 

Abstract of the dissertation.

 

Supervisor: Prof. Oto Luthar, PhD

Co-supervisor: Prof. Ari Joskowicz, PhD

 

Committee: research fellow Martin Pogačar, PhD, research fellow Christian Promitzer, PhD, and Assoc. Prof. Petra Svoljšak, PhD.

 

The defence will be held in English in the Gosposka Hall of the Geographical Museum, Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana.

 

You are warmly invited!