Isidora Grubački, PhD

I am a historian working in the field of contemporary European history, with a particular focus on feminist and women’s political thought, transnational women’s organizing in the first half of the twentieth century, and the history of antifascism.

My research to date, forthcoming as my first monograph with Bloomsbury Academic, examines the political transformation of interwar feminist organizing and political thought. Focusing on Yugoslavia, the study situates this case within a broader comparative and transnational perspective by analysing the involvement of Yugoslav women in major international organisations of the period, including the International Alliance of Women, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the Little Entente of Women, and the Women’s World Committee against War and Fascism.

In my current and future research, I increasingly focus on women’s transnational antifascist networks and the intellectual history of antifascism, with particular attention to East Central European—primarily Yugoslav and Czechoslovak—involvement in the Women’s World Committee against War and Fascism.

Current research interests:

• Women’s political thought
• Transnational women’s organising, including antifascist networks
• History of antifascist women’s organizing in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
• Intellectual history of antifascism
• Rural history, with a focus on peasant women

WORK AND PROJECTS

 Institute of Contemporary History

Since 2021, I have been working as a Research Assistant at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana, where I am a member of the Political History research program. Projects at the Institute:

Toward an Integrative Approach to Women’s Political Thought in East Central Europe: Cases from Slovenia and Beyond in the Long Twentieth Century

• ARIS-funded basic project
• Role: Project leader
• 1.3.2026 – 28.2.2029

 Trajectories and Experiences of Associational Life in Southeastern Europe: Perspectives from Yugoslavia and Beyond (1918-2020)

• PROTEUS bilateral program between Slovenia and France
• Role: project leader with Fabio Giomi (Centre d’études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (CETOBaC – EHESS, CNRS, Collège de France), Paris.
• 1.1.2026 – 31.12.2027

Analysis of and Responses to Extremist Narratives (ARENAS)

• HORIZON-RHA – HORIZON Research and Innovation Actions coordinated by CY Cergy Paris Université, France
• Role: project member
• 1.5. 2023 – 30. 4. 2027

Other projects:

 The History of Feminist Political Thought and Women’s Rights Discourses in East Central Europe 1929–2001 (HERESSEE)

• Since 2023, I have also been a member of the research team of the ERC-funded project led by Assoc. Professor Zsófia Lóránd at the University of Vienna
• Within the project, I study political thought about and produced by peasant women in Yugoslavia between the 1930s and 1960s, with a particular focus on the work and activism of Neda Sremec.

Gendering European Antifascism: A Transnational History of Women’s Antifascist Activism in East Central Europe (1933–1939) (GENERA1933-1939)

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
• The project will be carried out under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Chiara Bonfiglioli, with a secondment at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague with Prof. Jan Mervart.
• 1.9.2027 – 31.8.2029 (applied in September 2025)

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

I defended my doctoral dissertation at the History Department of the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna in January 2024. The dissertation was co-supervised by professors Balázs Trencsényi and Francisca de Haan, and was awarded a summa cum laude distinction.

During my doctoral studies, I was a visiting student at the University of Cambridge (2021), I held an Erasmus internship at the University of Ljubljana (2020), and was awarded grants as a visiting researcher at the ÉHÉSS in Paris (2021, 2023), the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague (2021), and the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics in Zagreb (2023).

Since then, I have received another Josef Dobrovsky Fellowship to do research in preparation of the MSCA PF application at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Prof. Jan Mervart.

I hold MA degrees in Comparative history and in Cultural Policy and Management. Besides academic work, I have plenty of experience of organizing cultural and public events in several NGOs in Serbia, as well as initiating and organizing various academic events.

From 2022 to 2026, I coordinated the Visiting Fellowship program at the Institute of Contemporary History, which I initiated in 2022.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

2026. Isidora Grubački and Marko Zajc, eds. Political Transformations in the Interwar Period: The Case of Slovenian Political Thought. Ljubljana: Založba INZ.

2025. Balázs Trencsényi, Lucija Balikić, Una Blagojević and Isidora Grubački, eds. East Central European Crisis Discourses in the Twentieth Century: A Never-Ending Story? New York – London, Routledge. 2025.

2025. Kristina Andělová and Isidora Grubački. “Crises of Feminism and Democracy in the Interwar Period: Yugoslav and Czechoslovak Entanglements.” In East Central European Crisis Discourses in the Twentieth Century: A Never-Ending Story?, edited by Balázs Trencsényi, Lucija Balikić, Una Blagojević, and Isidora Grubački. New York–London: Routledge.

2022. Isidora Grubački and Irena Selišnik, “The National Women’s Alliance in interwar Yugoslavia: between feminist reform and institutional social politics.” Women’s History Review 32, no. 2: 242–260.

2022. Isidora Grubački. “Women Activists’ Relation to Peasant Women’s Work in 1930s Yugoslavia.” In Women, Work and Agency: Organizing and Activism around the World in the Long Twentieth Century, edited by Eloisa Betti et al. Budapest–New York: CEU Press.

2022. Isidora Grubački. “Čija kriza?: Feminizam i demokratija u Jugoslaviji 20-ih godina XX veka.” Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 62, no. 2: 29–49.

2021. Isidora Grubački. “Communism, Left Feminism and Generations in the 1930s: The Case of Yugoslavia.” In Gender, Generations and Communism in Central and South-Eastern Europe, edited by Anna Artwińska and Agnieszka Mrozik. London: Routledge.

2020Isidora Grubački. “The Emergence of the Yugoslav Interwar Liberal Feminist Movement and the Little Entente of Women: An Entangled History Approach (1919–1924).” Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics. 

SCIENTIFIC NETWORKS:

• Intellectual History in East Central Europe.
• Antifascist studies network
• New Yugoslav studies association

ORGANIZATIONAL AND COLLABORATIVE INITIATIVES (selection)

• March 2021 – October 2023: Member of the organizing team and researcher of the project Neverending Story? Mapping Crisis-Discourses in East Central Europe, 1918-2020, hosted by CEU Democracy Institute, with prof. Balázs Trencsényi, Lucija Balikić, Una Blagojević.
• Co-organizer with Dr. Adela Hincu of the Women’s Intellectual History, Care, and Social Thought seminar series, as a partnership between the Who Cares in Europe COST Action and the Intellectual History in ECE Research Network, 2021-2022.
• Co-organizer (with Dr. Adela Hincu and Lucija Balikić) of the Intellectual History & Public Engagement: Intellectual History in East Central Europa Summer Workshop (COST Action Who Cares in Europe and Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena), July 2022.
• Co-organizer of the international workshop At the Nexus of Voluntary Action and Public Policies: Rethinking Care in Southeastern Europe, with Fabio Giomi (CNRS, CETOBaC, EHESS Paris), Ljubljana, August 2021.
• Co-organizer with Dr. Zsófia Lórand of the Women’s Intellectual History in East Central Europe seminar series, within the framework of the Intellectual History in ECE Research Network, 2021.

LANGUAGES:

• Serbian/ Croatian: native fluency
• English: proficient
• Slovene: advanced
• French: medium (reading, understanding)
• Spanish: medium (reading, understanding)
• Czech: beginner to medium (reading, understanding)
• German: beginner to medium (reading, understanding)