Eszter Varsa

Eszter Varsa is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Historical Studies at Central European University (CEU) in Vienna. She concurrently serves as a research affiliate in the ERC project ZARAH at CEU and investigator in the FEMEX project at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. She holds a Ph.D. and two M.A. degrees from CEU in Comparative Gender Studies, Gender Studies, and English with Teaching Qualifications/American Studies.

Her research examines 20th-century Eastern European social history through intersections of gender, ethnicity, and state policy. Primary interests include:

• History of child protection systems and state care
• Health/hygiene discourse and medical governance
• Reproductive politics and eugenics
• Roma communities under state socialism
• Labor activism and feminist knowledge production

She received significant recognition including the Emma Goldman Award (2023) for contributions to gender history and Roma studies, along with competitive fellowships from the Leibniz Institute and Heidelberg University.

She leads investigations in two major projects:

• ZARAH: Women's labor activism in Eastern Europe (ERC-funded)
• FEMEX: Feminist knowledge production in postwar Central/Eastern Europe