Brief Biography

Leda Sutlović holds a PhD from the Political Science Department, University of Vienna. For her dissertation Interpreting Post-Socialist Gendered Transformations through Feminist Institutionalism, Ideas and Knowledge – The Case of Croatia (1970-2010) (defended October 2021, summa cum laude), she received the Johanna Dohnal Förderpreis and the GAIN Gender&Agency Prize (University of Vienna). As a post-doctoral fellow, she held research stays at the Centre for East European Studies University of Zürich (2025), the Centre for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe University of Rijeka (2023), and the Institute for Advanced Studies Kőszeg (2019). She was a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna (2024/25), and at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna (2019). She has participated in several research projects focusing on the centrality of gender issues for political processes, most recently ‘Gendering democratization: path dependencies or rupture in the face of anti-gender campaigns’, led by prof. Andrea Krizsan at the CEU Democracy Institute. From May 2024 to September 2025, she worked at the research unit Balkan Studies at the IHB, where she led the project ‘Feeling (Counter)Democracy – Grassroots Democratic Innovations on the European Southeast’ (DEMINSEE), funded by the ÖAW/FWF Disruptive Innovations Funding Programme.

Research Interests

Period: 20th and 21st centuries
Area: (Post)Yugoslav space, with a focus on Croatia 
Topics: gender politics, (post)socialist transformations, social movements, democratic innovations, emotions and affect

Selected Publications

• 2024. Vesna Kesić: Isn’t Pornography Cynical? In Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women’s Rights: East Central Europe, Second Half of the Twentieth Century, eds. Lóránd, Zsófia, Hîncu, Adela, Mihajlović Trbovc, Jovana, Stańczak-Wiślicz, Katarzyna, 770-782. Budapest- Vienna-New York: CEU Press. 
• 2024. Temporality, Inclusivity, Affect – notes on the latest feminist generation. In Contours of Change: A Decade of Transformative Inquiry at CAS SEE – Ten Year Anniversary Publication, eds. Bojanić, Sanja and Graziano, Valeria, 46-58. University of Rijeka.
• 2023. Weaving Spaces: How regional spaces for culture shape narratives for (local) art, culture and cooperation. Zagreb: Operation City/Kooperativa. 
• 2022. Gescheiterte Kampagne. Der Konflikt um die Istanbul-Konvention in Kroatien. Religion&Gesellschaft in Ost und West 10, 22-26. 
• 2019. “Let’s preserve the achieved – And ask for more!” - Transformations of gender politics in Croatia. Women’s Studies International Forum, Volume 77, 102237. 
• 2019. The Impact of Neoconservative Activism on Gender Policies and Women’s Movement in Croatia. In Gendering Democratic Backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe. A comparative agenda, ed. Krizsan, Andrea and Roggeband, Conny, 31-78. Budapest: Centre for Policy Studies, Central European University. 
• with Jill Irvine, 2019. Political Opportunities and Intersectional Potentialities in Croatia. In Gendered Mobilizations and Intersectional Challenges: Contemporary Social Movements in Europe and the United States, ed. Irvine, Jill, Lang, Sabine, and Montoya, Celeste, 92-111. London: ECPR Press/Rowman&Littlefield.