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. 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 Interests:

• intellectual history

• transnational history

• gender history

• labour history

• popular cultures

Current Research Project:

WILA19-91, Women's Intellectual and Artistic Labor 1919–1991

funded by Horizon Europe: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

The aim of WILA19-91 is to bridge the gap between intellectual history and labor history, and through a methodological innovation of using labor-centric perspective in the field of history of ideas not only highlight the disparity between intellectual labor and intellectual achievements, but also challenge historiography's perception of the latter. While intellectual history predominantly focuses on artistic and intellectual achievements, it often fails to question the underlying conditions that made such achievements possible. Consequently, many marginalized groups have been excluded from the canon, as they did not have the necessary working conditions to consistently produce intellectual or artistic labor.

The WILA19-91 project focuses specifically on women's intellectual labor from 1919 to 1991, utilizing multiethnic environment of Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes, Kingdom of Yugoslavia and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a transnational laboratory spaces to observe the dynamics of intellectual and artistic labor across different generations, social classes, nationalities, and ethnicities.

The project's outcomes will hopefully contribute to establishing new norms for reevaluating artistic and intellectual achievements,  and ultimately, by focusing on underrepresented voices within the global intellectual history discourse, broadening and decolonizing the canon.

Recent Publications:

RENKO, Manca G. "Uninvited, history entered our lives" : the Post-World War I transitions in autobiographical perspective. Dacoromania litteraria. 2023, 10, Pp. 18-42. ISSN 2360-5189.

RENKO, Manca G. The woman without qualities? : the case of Alice Schalek, intellectual labour and women intellectuals. Acta Histriae. 2021, letn. 29, št. 4, Pp. 921-946, ilustr. ISSN 1318-0185.

RENKO, Manca G. Intellectual labor : gender, emotions, and circumstances in the postwar transitions. V: VERGINELLA, Marta (eds.), STRLE, Urška (eds.). Women and work in the North-Eastern Adriatic: postwar transitions. Budapest; Vienna; New York: CEU Press, Central European University Press, cop. 2025. Pp. 107-127. Work and labor - transdisciplinary studies for the 21st century, vol. 5. ISBN 978-963-386-751-8

RENKO, Manca G. Angela Vode : the woman in contemporary society. V: LÓRÁND, Zsófia (eds.), et al. Texts and contexts from the history of feminism and women's rights : East Central Europe, second half of the twentieth century. Budapest [etc.]: Central European University Press, cop. 2024. Pp. 98-108. ISBN 978-963-386-453-1.

RENKO, Manca G. Vida Tomšič : on the question of women's social position in the contemporary world. V: LÓRÁND, Zsófia (eds.), et al. Texts and contexts from the history of feminism and women's rights : East Central Europe, second half of the twentieth century. Budapest [etc.]: Central European University Press, cop. 2024. Pp. 323-333. ISBN 978-963-386-453-1.

SHARP, Ingrid, RENKO, Manca G., RONAN, Alison, SZAPOR, Judith. Suffrage, democracy and citizenship. V: PAINTER, Corinne (eds.), SHARP, Ingrid (eds.), STIBBE, Matthew (eds.). Socialist women and the Great War, 1914-21 : protest, revolution and commemoration. London ... [etc.]: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. Pp. 99-132, 227-235, ISBN 978-1-3501-1034-2.

PAINTER, Corinne, HELFERT, Veronika, RENKO, Manca G., SZAPOR, Judith. Life trajectories: making revolution and breaking boundaries. V: PAINTER, Corinne (eds.), SHARP, Ingrid (eds.), STIBBE, Matthew (eds.). Socialist women and the Great War, 1914-21 : protest, revolution and commemoration. London ... [etc.]: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. Pp. 133-167, 236-249.