Dr. Victor Strazzeri

Victor Strazzeri is a social scientist whose research is at the cross section of contemporary history, social and political theory and gender studies. His work is informed both by a historical understanding of theory as well a theory-informed outlook on history.

His main interests are how social conflict and conceptual production relate; how communist party politics and social movement activism interact as well as global practices of solidarity. His work spans many contexts (Imperial Germany; postwar Italy; Spain, Brazil and Chile under dictatorship and democracy; Socialist Yugoslavia) and their connections.

As MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow at INZ (2025-27) he will develop a comparative study of communist women’s reproductive politics in 1970s Italy and Socialist Slovenia (REDFEM) under the supervision of Marko Zajc and Nina Vodopivec.

He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Universities of Berne and Geneva and, most recently, the Federal University of São Paulo. He has held visiting fellowships at the Swiss Institute in Rome, at the University of Alicante and at ifk – International Research Center for Cultural Studies (Kunstuniversität Linz) in Vienna.

From 2019-2024, he was coordinator of the project “Internationalization of the Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism” (Berlin Institute of Critical Theory/Rosa Luxemburg Foundation).

He is co-founder of Weber Scholars Network, an international network which aims to foster debate on the work and legacy of Max and Marianne Weber.

Education

• PhD in Political Science History | Freie Universität Berlin | 2014—2017 | Doctoral Thesis: “Max Weber and German Social Democracy: a study on the relationship between the liberal bourgeoisie and the labor movement in Imperial Germany”| Supervisors: PD. Dr. Jan Rehmann, and Prof. Dr. Klaus Roth | Research stays: Dept. of History, George Washington University; Institut für Soziologie, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.  Funding: DAAD.
• MA in Social Work| Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)| 2009—2011 | Master Thesis: The left and the transition to democracy in Brazil: 1979-1989| Supervisor: Prof. Dr. José Paulo Netto. Funding: CNPq.
• BA in Social Sciences| Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo | 2003-2006

Employment

• Research Associate| 2025—present| The Institut of Contemporary History
• Postdoctoral Fellow (non-funded) | 2023—2025 | Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Department of Social Sciences | Host: Prof. Henrique Amorim
• Project coordinator | “Internationalization of the Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism” | 2019—2024 | Berlin Institute of Critical Theory/Rosa Luxemburg Foundation
• Postdoctoral fellow | 2020—2021 | Université de Genève, Department of History | Host: Prof. Sandrine Kott
• Postdoctoral fellow and adjunct lecturer | 2017—2020 | Universität Bern | Host: Prof. Brigitte Studer

Research Interests

Areas of research

• Gender relations in the communist movement
• History of left-wing parties and social movements in the 19^th and 20^th centuries
• Internationalism, solidarity, social justice struggles from a global perspective
• Social history of ideas and concepts
• Social and political theory (Marxist thought; critical theory; Max Weber)

Collaboration in research programmes

• Mujeres y redes transnacionales de solidaridad, 1960s-1990s | Host: University of Alicante |Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation | 09/2024—08/2027
• Género, compromiso y transgresión en espacios transnacionales e intergeneracionales. Siglo XX | Host: University of Alicante | Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation | 09/2021—08/2024

Selected projects (as principal investigator)

• Red feminists: communist women activists and reproductive rights struggles in post-1968 Italy and Slovenia (REDFEM) | MSCA European Fellowship – 09/2025—08/2027
• Purple on red: (euro)communists and feminists in the global 1970s | Swiss National Science Foundation (Spark Grant) – 12/2020—11/2021

Mobility and fellowships

• Research Fellow | ifk (Vienna) | 03/2025—06/2025
• Visiting Fellow | Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino | 06/2024—07/2024
• Visiting Fellow | Universidad de Alicante | 04/2024—05/2024
• Resident| Istituto Svizzero Roma (Roma Calling) | 09/2020—06/2021
• Visiting Fellow | Graduate School Gender Studies (IZfG), Universität Bern | 01/2020 —12/2021

Scientific networks

• Associated Researcher | Center for Dictatorship and Democracy Studies (CEDID), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• Co-founder/coordinator | Weber Scholars Network

Educational activity

• Adjunct lecturer | University Federal de São Paulo (Sociology); Universität Bern (History).
• Guest lecturer | Università di Bologna (Global History) | Institute of Radical Imagination, Kassos-Greece

Selected publications

• V. Strazzeri (2024) “The interweaving: communist women and feminism in 1970s Italy”, Contemporary European History, v. 33, n. 3, 2024, 1021–1037.
• V. Strazzeri (2024) “Beyond the Double Blind Spot: Relocating Communist Women as Transgressive Subjects in Contemporary Historiography”, Gender & History, v. 36, n. 2, 755-774.
• V. Strazzeri and P. Stelliferi (2023), “Transnational Feminist Movements in History. An Introduction”, Contemporanea, Rivista di storia dell’800 e del ‘900, 4/2023, 507-517
• V. Strazzeri and M. Teixeira (2023) “Presentation of the dossier. The centennial of History and Class Consciousness: Lukács and critical theory today”, Dissonância: Critical Theory Journal, v. 7, 1-17.
• V. Strazzeri, K. Baehrens, J. Koivisto eds. (2023), Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism: A Selection. Leiden: Brill.
• V. Strazzeri, M. Ferrari and M. Vedda eds. (2022), Diccionario Histórico-Crítico del Marxismo-Feminismo. Buenos Aires: Herramienta.
• V. Strazzeri (2022). The Young Max Weber and German Social Democracy: the ‘labour question’ and the genesis of social theory in Imperial Germany (1884-1899). Leiden: Brill (Historical Materialism Series).
• V. Strazzeri (2019) Forging socialism through democracy: a critical review survey of literature on Eurocommunism. Twentieth Century Communism 17, 26-66.