Research Team

Maria Bucur is the John V. Hill Professor of history and gender studies at Indiana University. She is the author of the volumes The Nation’s Gratitude: War and Citizenship in Romania after World War I (2022), The Birth of Democratic Citizenship:  Women in Modern Romania (2018), The Century of Women:  How Women Have Changed the World since 1900 (2018), Gendering Modernism.  A Historical Reappraisal of the Canon (2017), Heroes and Victims:  Remembering War in Twentieth-Century Romania (2009), Eugenics and Modernization in Interwar Romania (2002), as well as over forty peer reviewed articles and chapters. She is currently pursuing research on the history of disability in 20^th century Eastern Europe, with a focus on interwar Romania.

Krassimira Daskalova is Professor of Modern European Cultural History at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia. She has been editor and book review editor of ASPASIA since 2007 and served — between 2005 and 2010 — as president of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History, IFRWH. She is author, editor and co-editor of more than twenty books in both Bulgarian and English, among them: Zheni, pol I modernizatsia v Bulgaria, 1878-1944 (2012); Voices of Their Own. Oral History Interviews of Women (2004); A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s Movements and Feminisms. Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe, 19th-20th Centuries (co-authored and co-edited with Francisca de Haan and Anna Loutfi, 2006); Women’s Citizenship and Political Rights (co-authored and co-edited with Sirkku K. Hellsten and Anne Maria Holli, 2006); Ot siankata na istoriata: Zhenite v bulgarskoto obshtestvo i kultura. Tom 2. Izvori za istoriata na zhenite: dnevnitsi, spomeni, pisma, beletristika (co-authored and co-edited with Georgeta Nazarska and Reneta Roshkeva, 2021). Email: daskalova[at]phls.uni-sofia.bg

Gabriela Dudeková Kováčová is a senior researcher and PhD. Supervisor at the Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences, with a focus on social and gender history in the context of Habsburg monarchy and post-Habsburg Central Europe in 19^th and 20^th centuries. She is author and co-author of several volumes, including Na ceste k modernej žene. Kapitoly z dejín rodových vzťahov na Slovensku [Towards the modern woman. Chapters on Gender History in Slovakia] (2011), recently Človek vo vojne: stratégie prežitia a sociálne dôsledky prvej svetovej vojny na Slovensku [People at war: Survival strategies and social consequences of the first world war in Slovakia] (2019); “S ľudom a pre ľud:” Cesty k demokracii na Slovensku za monarchie a prvej republiky [“With the people and for the people:” Paths to democracy in Slovakia during the monarchy and the First Republic] (co-edited with Juraj Benko, 2020); and V supermarkete dejín: Podoby moderných dejín a spoločnosti v stredoeurópskom priestore [In the supermarket of history: The pattern of modern history and society in the Central European region] (2021)

Eleni Fournaraki is Associate Professor in Modern Social History, in the Department of Sociology, at the University of Crete. Her main research interests concern Modern Greece and include the following historical fields or topics through the gender perspective: women’s education and the cultural construction of gender difference; women’s collective action and the sphere of publicity; gender, class and citizenship; bodily culture and sport in relation to gender, class and nationalist discourses and meanings. On the above fields she has published several studies. She has co-edited three collected works, two of them regarding the cultural history of sport (one of them in English) and the third gender historiography in Greece. Her current writings concern the history of the body but also sexuality. She makes part of the Group of Editors (since 2009) of Aspasia, The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History (New York, Oxford, Berghahn Books).

Geragori Vaia Vanessa is an MA student at the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies of the University of Crete, where she also received her BA degree. Her ongoing MA thesis is entitled "Greek Feminist Organisations and the Child and Youth Protection in the Interwar period (1923-1939)". Her research interests focus on women's/feminist associations of the Interwar period, the feminist press, and human rights.

Giorgos Manios is a PhD candidate at the Department of History and Political Sciences at Panteion University, Athens, Greece. The topic of his dissertation is the quest for “National specificity” in Greece and Romania during the interwar period.  His interests revolve around Balkan intellectual history, with a special interest in modern Romania and  modern Greece. He has published three articles in collected volumes regarding Romanian historiography, perceptions of the Greek Revolution of 1821 and historiography of the communist period in Romania. 

Valentina Mitkova is Associate Professor at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Library and Information Studies and Cultural Policy. Her research interests refer to the fields of History of books and reading, History of women and gender, Social and cultural history of the modern era. V. Mitkova is author of the monograph Pol, periodichen pechat i modernizacia v Bulgaria (ot kraia na XIX vek do 40-te godini na XX vek) [Gender, periodical press and modernization in Bulgaria (from the end of the 19 the century till the 1940s) (Sofia: Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” Publishing House, 2022), as well as of other publications related to women’s authorship and women’s periodicals.

Ivana Pantelić is an associated researcher at the Institute for Contemporary History in Belgrade. She has BA degree in History and MA degree Social Anthropology and PhD degree in History at Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Her field of research is social history, especially women emancipation in Serbia and Yugoslavia. Pantelić is author of the books on social emancipation of female partisans in post-war Yugoslavia, and about Jovanka Broz’s public  representation, co-author of books about diaries from the Second World War and book about  twenty most important women in 20. century Srebian history.

Eleftheria Papastefanaki works as postdoctoral researcher in this research project. She received her BA in Philology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and she completed her postgraduate and doctoral studies at the Department of Philosophy and Social Studies of the University of Crete. Her master’s thesis dealt with the educational work of Roza Imbrioti. Her doctoral dissertation was published in edited form by the National Center for Social Research (EKKE) in 2020, entitled Left Pedagogical Thought in Greece (1910-1951). From the liberal progressive education to the polytechnism. Her research interests focus on history of educational ideas (19th-20th), history of women’s education (Greece, Balkans-socialist countries), women’s movement and political activities, social history of Greek civil war (1946-1949).

DIMITRA SAMIOU was born in Athens, Greece. She studied English Language and Literature before undertaking postgraduate studies in History in the University Paris VII. In 2008 she supported her PhD thesis in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the University of Athens on the history of female suffrage in Greece during the 19^th and 20^th century. She has written many articles on the history of Greek and European feminisms during the Interwar period which were published in various feminist revues and collective volumes.