Dr.ⁱⁿ Manca G. Renko

Marie-Curie Fellow

Research Project
WILA19-91, WOMEN’S INTELLECTUAL AND ARTISTIC LABOR 1919-1991

Contact
Mail: manca.grgic.renko@univie.ac.at

Manca G. Renko specializes in the intellectual and gender history of the late 19th and 20th centuries. In 2017, she earned her doctorate at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Primorska, with a dissertation on Russia and the importance of Slavic reciprocity in the northern Adriatic between 1848 and 1914.

She joined the ERC EIRENE project at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, in 2019, where she researched women intellectuals in post-war transitions from a transnational perspective, focusing on Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, and Italy. In the fall of 2023, she became a member of the ERC HERESSEE research group at the University of Vienna, contributing to the study of feminist thought and political discourses in Central and Eastern Europe between 1929 and 2001. In the winter of 2023, she joined the project History of Women’s Work in the 19th and 20th Centuries in Slovenia at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU). Since September 2025, she has been a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Vienna, leading her project WILA 1919–1991, which offers a transnational perspective on women’s intellectual and artistic work in Yugoslavia.

Beyond academia, Manca G. Renko is active as an editor and writer, with a focus on literature, theory, and popular culture. She served as the artistic director of the international literary festival Fabula from 2016 to 2020 and has been president of the Council of the Museum of Contemporary History of Slovenia since 2022 (term ending in 2025). Since 2021, she has been editor-in-chief of Cukr, a magazine published by the Museum and Galleries of the City of Ljubljana (MGML). In 2024, she co-founded the independent small press No!Press, which publishes high-quality fiction and nonfiction in Slovene and in translation. Her book Živalsko mesto. Eseji o popularni kulturi, zgodovini in čustvih (Animal City. Essays on Popular Culture, History and Emotions, 2024) received broad critical and public acclaim in Slovenia.

Research Focus

• intellectual history
• cultural history
• transnational history
• gender history
• labour history