This website builds on the individual and collective research of the ZARAH team.

ZARAH researcher Zhanna Popova led the conceptualization, writing, and curation of this website. She selected and adapted the project’s research results in the form of this website, writing the texts, selecting the illustrations, and shaping the overall presentation, while coordinating closely with the research team and designers to bring everything together.

The website also builds on the work of the web designers and the developer, and it also integrates contributions from other researchers.

ZARAH Researchers

Zhanna Popova

Zhanna Popova is the "corresponding author" of this website. She was a postdoctoral researcher in ZARAH. She is a labour historian interested in the history of Poland and Russia. Her book Coerced Labour, Forced Displacement, and the Soviet Gulag, 1880s–1930s was published by Amsterdam University Press in 2024.

Selin Çağatay

Selin Çağatay was a postdoctoral researcher in ZARAH. She works on women’s activism, gendered geopolitics, and labour and education policies in Turkey and transnationally. She is the co-author of Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Scandinavia, and Turkey (Palgrave, 2022).

Mátyás Erdélyi

Mátyás Erdélyi was a postdoctoral researcher in ZARAH. A historian of Central Europe, he is a researcher in the project “Uses of Civil Justice in Central Europe, 1895–1938” at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research at the University of Vienna.

Alexandra Ghiț

Alexandra Ghiț was a postdoctoral researcher in ZARAH. Currently based at the University of Vienna, she researches women’s political thought and labour activism in Romania. She is the author of the forthcoming Welfare Work without Welfare (De Gruyter Brill, 2025).

Olga Gnydiuk

Olga Gnydiuk was a postdoctoral researcher in ZARAH. She is a researcher in the project “Ukrainian History Global Initiative” where she examines emigration, in particular experiences, practices and networks of emigrants from the territories of Ukraine in the twentieth century.

Veronika Helfert

Veronika Helfert was a postdoctoral researcher in ZARAH. She is a Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna. In her current research, she explores women’s activism in Austria and international trade union networks. She is the author of Women, Wake Up! (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021) (in German).

Ivelina Masheva

Ivelina Masheva was a postdoctoral researcher in ZARAH. She is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Historical Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia. Her work examines gender, labour, and law in Bulgaria.

Jelena Tešija

Jelena Tešija is a PhD researcher at Central European University. Her dissertation explores the history of the International Co-operative Women’s Guild and its gendered labour activism.

Eszter Varsa

Eszter Varsa was a postdoctoral researcher in ZARAH. Specializing in Hungary and Eastern Europe, she researches agrarian women’s activism in the early twentieth century and Romani women’s contributions to work-related knowledge production in the postwar era. She is the author of Protected Children, Regulated Mothers (CEU Press, 2021).

Susan Zimmermann

Susan Zimmermann is University Professor at Central European University and Principal Investigator of the ZARAH project. Her most recent monograph (in German) is Women’s Politics and Men’s Trade Unionism (Löcker Verlag, 2021).