This book talk will introduce the 2026 edited book ‘Anti-Gender Mobilizations in the Post-Yugoslav Space’ (Palgrave 2026).
The edited volume ‘Anti-Gender Mobilizations in the Post-Yugoslav Space’ (Palgrave 2026) offers a comparative analysis of anti-gender mobilizations across seven post-Yugoslav countries, examining their historical trajectories, cultural specificities, and religious framings. It shows how, despite political differences, ultraconservative actors converge around opposition to gender, positioning it as a shared symbolic threat. The book is the result of collaborative work within the Gender and Politics Research Network in South-East Europe (GenPolSEE), a feminist academic network established in 2022 to advance research on gendered politics in the region.
During this book talk, its editors - Prof Roman Kuhar and Dr Adriana Zaharijević - will present the main findings of the book, reflect on recent developments in anti-gender mobilizations in the region, and discuss how feminist and other actors can respond to these contemporary challenges.
About the speakers
Prof Roman Kuhar is a Professor of Sociology and a researcher at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His research focuses on issues of discrimination, human rights, citizenship, and equality politics. He has participated in several domestic and international research projects and has published and edited several books, including Beyond the Pink Curtain: Everyday life of LGBT people in Eastern Europe (with J. Takács, Peace Institute, 2007), Anti-Gender Mobilizations in Europe and the Feminist Response: Productive Resistance (with R. Smrdelj, Palgrave, 2025), and Anti-gender Campaigns in Europe (with D. Paternotte, Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017). For the latter, he was awarded the ARRS Excellent in Science Award in 2018. From 2017 to 2021, he served as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. He is currently a co-editor of Social Politics (Oxford University Press) and the head of the research unit at the Department of Sociology.
Dr Adriana Zaharijević is a Principal Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade. Her work combines political philosophy, feminist theory and social history. She is the author of four monographs (in Serbian) Becoming a Woman [2010], Who Is an Individual? [2014, 2019], Life of Bodies [2020], and Judith Butler and Politics (Edinburgh University Press, 2023; Judith Butler in Politika, Univerza u Ljubljani, 2025). She published in East European Politics and Societies, European Journal of Women Studies, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Redescriptions, Signs, Social Politics, and Women’s Studies International Forum. Her texts have been translated into Albanian, Bulgarian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Portuguese, Slovenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian, and she has been translating feminist theory and philosophy into Serbian for two decades. She writes short pieces for a wider public, in which she tackles social inequalities, antinationalism and antimilitarism. Adriana is the 2022 Emma Goldman Snowball awardee.
This activity is funded by the EUI Widening Europe Programme. The EUI Widening Europe Programme, backed by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in Widening countries, and thus foster a more cohesive European Higher Education and Research Area.
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