Affiliated Scholars

Dijana Simić (she/her) is a literary and cultural studies scholar whose transdisciplinary research and teaching oscillate between Gender Studies, Slavic Philology, and (South) Eastern European Studies. In addition to her work as a university and project assistant at the University of Graz and the University of Innsbruck, she also taught Slavic Literary and Cultural Studies as well as Gender Studies at the University of Graz, the University of Vienna, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. As a Marietta-Blau-fellow in 2017, she worked on her dissertation "Intimate Counterpublics. A Gender-Oriented Analysis of New Sensitivity in Bosnian-Herzegovinian Prose" at the then Budapest-based Central European University (Department of Gender Studies) and the Universities of Banja Luka, Sarajevo, and Tuzla. As part of the Elisabeth-List-Fellowship Program for Gender Studies, she promoted Affect Studies within Slavic and American Studies as a member of the "Intimate Readings Research Group" between the Universities of Graz and Erlangen-Nuremberg. This cooperation led to the publication of the edited collection "Affective Worldmaking. Narrative Counterpublics of Gender and Sexuality" and the series "Gender, Affect, and Politics" for the community radio station "Helsinki" in Graz. Other scholarships took her to Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Armenia, and Russia. Most recently, she chaired a working group within the interdisciplinary project UniNEtZ (Universities and Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs) focusing on the UN’s SDG 5 "Gender Equality" and, in doing so, strengthening feminist perspectives in Sustainability Studies. Besides her work as a researcher and university lecturer, Dijana Simić is also a radio broadcaster and a (literary) translator from Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian into German. Slovenian is her second Slavic language.​​​​​​​

Zoe* Steinsberger is a doctoral student* in the Doctoral College Gender and Gender Relations in Transformation at the University of Innsbruck and a scholarship holder* of the Excellence Scholarship of the University of Innsbruck. From February 2021 to June 2024 Zoe* was a university assistant* at the CGI Innsbruck. Since fall 2024, she* has been teaching at various universities in the fields of gender studies and educational science. Her* work focuses on trans studies, materialist queer theory and gender studies, as well as feminist epistemologies and methodologies. Together with Gundula Ludwig, Zoe* Steinsberger is editor* of Femina Politica 2/2023 “Trans* Inequalities and Trans*feminisms”. Her* work has been published in the journals Behemoth - Journal on social Dis/Order, Femina Politica and LuXemburg.