Category Archives: CEFRES Team

CEFRES Team

Anne Fornerod – Research & CV

Anne Fornerod is a director of research at the CNRS, attached to the UMR Law, Religion, Business and Society (UMR 7354 DRES) at the University of Strasbourg.

She co-leads the project AMI-SHS ReligiS- Religions et sociétés face aux défis contemporains (University of Strasbourg, 2025-2031)

Her research focuses on religious law, which consists of studying the legal framework governing religion in contemporary societies. She conducts research on the legal regime governing religious heritage, whether in terms of its future or the relationship between the religious and cultural uses of these immovable and movable assets. She is also interested in freedom of religion, whether in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, in the form of spiritual assistance in public services, or in its relationship with freedom of expression. In the French context, she also works on the legal framework of Islam. Finally, she regularly works on the variations of the principle of secularism in French law.

CV 

University Education

2015 Postdoctoral Habilitation (University of Strasbourg)

2006 PhD in public law (Paris-Sud University)

Profession Education

2021 Director of research at CNRS (2nd class)

2011 Research fellow at CNRS (1st class)

2010-2011 Postdoctoral project RELIGARE (FP7, 2010-2013)

2006-2008 Postdoctoral research at CNRS (UMR 7012 PRISME, CNRS / University of Strasbourg)

Professional experience

Co-head of the internal Rights and Religions team at UMR 7354 DRES

2021-2025: Member of Section 36 of the National Committee of the CNRS

2023-2028: Collaborator at COLIBEX – France-Quebec Research Chair on Contemporary Issues in Freedom of Expression

2020-2028: Co-head of the research area Constructions de la société européenne in the Institut Thématique Interdisciplinaire (ITI) MAKErS

2018-2022: Member of the research council of the Maison Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l’Homme – Alsace (MISHA)

Member of research society Religioni, diritti ed Economie nello Spazio Mediterraneo (REDESM)

Member of the Consortium européen des recherches sur les relations Églises-État

Participation in research projects

2023-2024: Islam et droit des services publics, led by OMIJ (University of Limoges), financed by the Bureau central des cultes

2023-2027: Head of a working group within the ANR project Just Moral (led by UMR DCS)

2019-2022: Les géométries variables de l’aumônerie musulmane. Comparaison interinstitutionelle, financed by the Bureau central des cultes

2019-2023: Interactive Atlas of religious or belief minority rights and claims in the EU countries (dir. Silvio Ferrari, Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII, Bologne)

2011-2022: Mémoloi project, coordinated by the Centre d’Études sur la Coopération Juridique Internationale (CECOJI) on the memory of major heritage protection laws, in conjunction with the Directorate General of Heritage and the History Committee of the Ministry of Culture

2010-2013: RELIGARE – Religious diversity and secular models in Europe-Innovative approaches to law and policy, Projet Européen financé par la Commission Européenne (7ème PCRD)

Selection of publications

  • Les géométries variables de l’aumônerie musulmane. Comparaison inter-institutionnelle : prison, armées, hôpital (avec C. Béraud, C. de Galembert, B. Farhat), PUAM, coll. Droit et religions, 2024, 278 p.
  • La liberté de religion en question(s) (dir.), Larcier, Bruxelles, 2022, 212 p.
  • Le pluralisme religieux dans les cimetières en Europe (dir.), Strasbourg, PUS, 2019, 299 p.
  • Annotated Legal Documents on Islam in Europe: France, Leiden, Brill, 2016, 192 p.
  • Funding religious heritage (ed.), Farnham, Ashgate, 2015, 224 p.
  • Le régime juridique du patrimoine religieux, Paris, L’Harmattan, collection Droit du patrimoine culturel et naturel, 2013, 512 p.
  • Assistance spirituelle dans les services publics (dir.), Strasbourg, PUS, 2012, 198 p.
  • Liberté de religion et liberté d’expression, Revue du droit des religions, 20/2025 (coord. dossier thématique)
  • Les enjeux contemporains du patrimoine culturel religieux, Revue du droit des religions, 3/2017 (coord. dossier thématique)
CEFRES Team

Barbora Spalová – Research & CV

Barbora Spalová returns to CEFRES, where she was an intern during her studies at Charles University, now as a religious anthropologist. In January 2026, she will begin working with Anne Fornerod on a Tandem project which aims to create a larger European project entitled Agency of presence and absence of religious buildings.

Barbora Spalová studied ethnology and social anthropology at Charles University in Prague. While working on her dissertation, she began to focus primarily on the anthropology of Christianity in combination with studies of memory and public space. Her published dissertation is entitled God Knows Why. A Study of Memories and Power Regimes in Christian Churches in Northern Bohemia (2012). Her postdoctoral project continued in the field of memory studies and focused on the management of tangible and intangible traces of the German past in the Czech and German border regions (in collaboration with social geographer Paul Bauer). Within the field of anthropology of Christianity, Barbora Spalová focuses on the relationships between churches and societies, especially in Central Europe, where they are marked by years of state atheism, lived spiritualities and ecclesiologies and their political-economic aspects, as well as specific manifestations of post-secularism in this region, new configurations of the religious, spiritual, and secular. More than ten years ago, she also began to study the renewal of monastic life after 1990 in former Czechoslovakia, and this interest led her to new monastic communities in California in 2022-2023. Both old and new monasticism remain a field of research for Barbora Spalová, and this will also be the case within the Tandem project at CEFRES.

The aim of Tandem is to connect researchers from many fields who could jointly prepare a project in which churches and monasteries in Europe will be examined as agentive phenomena that are not only monuments worthy of conservation, but actively enter into spatial, emotional, political, economic, symbolic, and social relationships with their surroundings and are established by these relationships, just as they help to reestablish their surroundings again and again. In short, we ask: what does the presence or absence of churches and monasteries “do”?

CV

ORCID: 0000-0002-6930-709X; Researcher ID: K-5288-2015; Scopus ID: 26668023100

Education and key qualifications

31/05/2009 PhD. in Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences / Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

2001 M.A. in Ethnology, Faculty of Arts/ Institute of Ethnology Department, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

Current position(s)

2014 – present Senior lecturer and researcher , Faculty of Social Sciences / Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

Previous position(s)

2022 – 2023 Fulbright Visiting Scholar, School of Humanities and Sciences/ Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, USA 2013 – 2017 Junior member of a research cluster / team of the University Centre of Excellence for the Research of Collective Memory , Faculty of Social Sciences / Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic

Research experience

Grants and fellowships since PhD (in the position of project leader)

2026 – 2026 Agency of presence and absence of religious buildings, TANDEM Cefres CU-CNRS (with Anne Fornerod)

2022 – 2023 New monastic communities and networks: Spirituality arising from the contradictions of secular societies (Fulbright – Masaryk scholarship at Stanford University, California)

2019 – 2022 Dynamics of churches´ moral economies in the Czech and Slovak Republics in the context of restitutions of church properties and church-state (Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)

2019 – 2022 Society and church in the process of restitution of church properties: Support of participation (Technological Agency of the Czech Republic)

2016 – 2017 Moral economy of Czech and Austrian monasteries (Aktion Czech Republic- Austria)

2012 – 2014 Space and Social Memory in the Czech Borderlands after 1990: Post-Socialist Management of Tangible and Intangible Traces of the German Past (postdoc project, Grant Agency of the Czech Republic)

Grants and fellowships since PhD (in the position of researcher)

2024 – 2026 The role of religion in the integration of migrants from Ukraine and changes in the Czech religious landscape. Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, led by Tomáš Havlíček

2023–2024 Post-secular Approach to Memory Processes in Central-Eastern Europe, Visegrad Funds, led by Zuzana Bogumil

2013 – 2014 On the way to the spirituality of collaboration? The laymen and clergy in the Czech Catholic church. In the frame of the project Identity of clergy in the 20th century, led by Jiří Hanuš

2008 – 2010 How is the religious reality produced? Apparitions and possessions as a practical and collective endeavor. Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, led by Zdeněk Konopásek

Selected publications

Spalová, B., Pelikán, V., & Liška, M. (2024). Religious–secular as non-competitive: Encouraging participative church in a Czech Catholic diocese. Social Compass, 71(2), 365–386. DOI

Spalová, B., & Gajdoš, A. (2024). Church Life LIVE! Ritual innovations and repertoires of belonging in Czech and Slovak Christian communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 10(1), 252–280. DOI

Spalová, B., Lukeš Rybanská, I., Gajdoš, A., Tížik, M., Frantová, V., Nosál, M., Pelikán, V., Beláňová, A., Čada, K., Pařil, V., Müllner, V., & Parks, T. (2023). Vize zdaru, vize zmaru: Proměny církví v Česku a na Slovensku v kontextu restitucí [Visions of success, visions of failure: Transformations of churches in Czechia and Slovakia in the context of restitutions of church properties] (1st ed.). Praha: Karolinum. ISBN 978-80-246-5623-6.

Spalová, B., & Tesárek, J. (2022). Other time: Construction of temporality in contemporary Benedictine monasteries. In M. Brenišínová & L. Panušková (Eds.), (Trans)missions: Monasteries as sites of cultural transfers (pp. 113–128). Archaeopress. PDF

Spalová, B. (2022). Discretio and the golden mean: Working out frugality and thrift in two Czech post-socialist monasteries. In C. Alexander & D. Sosna (Eds.), Thrift and its paradoxes: From domestic to political economy (pp. 117–139). Berghahn Books. Dokumen.pub

Spalová, B. & Jonveaux, I. 2021. Monastère et société : les échanges entre le monastère et la société dans le contexte des restitutions des biens ecclésiaux. Social Compass, 68(4), 634-652. DOI

Spalová, B., & Lukeš Rybanská, I. (2021). Translating secular–religious divide: Everyday negotiation of Christian distinctiveness in Catholic schools in Czechia and Slovakia. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 43(4), 375–395.DOI

Jonveaux, I., & Spalová, B. (2018). The economy of stability in Catholic monasteries in the Czech Republic and Austria. Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, 9, 269–296. DOI

Spalová, B. (2017). Remembering the German past in the Czech lands: A key moment between communicative and cultural memory. History and Anthropology, 28(1), 84–109. DOI

Spalová, B. (2017). Remembering the German past in the Czech lands: A key moment between communicative and cultural memory. History and Anthropology, 28(1), 84–109. DOI

CEFRES Team, Non classé

Marija Martinovic – Research & CV

Unification and disunity: philosophy of the socialist crisis in Yugoslavia (1945–1990)

Research area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices

Marija Martinovic is a PhD student in philosophy and Slavic studies at the École doctorale 20 at Sorbonne University, affiliated with the Eur’Orbem research unit (UMR 8224, CNRS/Sorbonne University). A member of the “Passage” junior research laboratory within Eur’Orbem, she is writing a thesis under the supervision of Philippe Gelez and Daniel Baric entitled Unification and disunity: philosophy of the socialist crisis in Yugoslavia (1945–1990). 

From a philosophical, political, and historical perspective, this project interrogates the ideological, moral, and symbolic conditions of the fall of Yugoslav socialism. Drawing on the distinction between unification and inclusion, she proposes a conceptual rethinking of the Yugoslav crisis based on its internal contradictions: the concealment of diversity in the name of proclaimed diversity, and the resulting disillusionment within a regime which based itself on an ideology of national cohesion. This study therefore seeks to clarify the philosophical mechanisms of disunity, in dialogue with the works of Slavoj Žižek, Milovan Djilas, and Balkan critical traditions.

By orienting this thesis around a comparative approach between political philosophy, sociology and history of ideas, it interrogates the specificity of Yugoslav ways of thinking which are often founded on an empirical logic to social observation and philosophical conceptualisation distinct from Western models. She clarifies the passage from Yugoslav socialism to the post-Socialist era, understood as a process of transition and a redefinition of collective, moral, and religious identities. 

Her recent works include a critical report on the work of Sacha Markovic, La Yougoslavie que racontent les humanistes marxistes (to appear in the review Balkanologie, 2025), as well as a presentation from the international conference “Ivan Illich, a century of critical thinking” (Cres, Croatia, 2025) entitled The Influence of Ivan Illich: the Case of Slavoj Žižek”, which will soon be published.

Marija Martinovic teaches modern and classical literature whilst undertaking her research into the philosophical forms of crisis, secularisation, and national identity in the post-Yugoslav space. She is a visiting fellow at CEFRES as part of a research trip devoted to the comparative study of ideological crises in Central Europe and the Balkans.

 

CV

Education

2023-present: Doctoral candidate (ED20, Lettres Sorbonne Université) under the supervision of Philippe Gelez (Paris 4) and Daniel Baric (Paris 4). Doctoral research under the title “« Unification et désunion : philosophie de la crise socialiste en Yougoslavie (1945-1990)”

2021-2022: Master’s degree (year 2), research in philosophy and society, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (mention bien)

Thesis under the supervision of Philippe Buttgen (Paris 1): “Élucidation de l’échec du socialisme yougoslave, à travers l’Idée communiste inclusive de Slavoj Žižek.”

2021-2022: Erasmus (courses and oral/written exams conducted in English), Sapienza University in Rome, Italy (mention très bien)

2020-2021: Master’s degree (year 1), research in philosophy and society, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (mention assez bien)

Thesis under the supervision of Magali Bessonne (Paris 1): La religion comme nécessité morale au bien chez Rousseau

2019-2020: International programme (courses and oral/written exams conducted in Serbian (cyrillic)), University of Belgrade, Serbia (mention très bien)

2017-2020: Undergraduate degree, philosophy and humanities, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University (mention bien)

2016-2017: Baccalauréat in literature, Louise de Marillac private lycée, Paris (mention bien)

EFB – École Française de Belgrade, Belgrade

Professional Experience

2025-present: Research fellowship (six months) to assist doctoral research, CEFRES

2024-present: Teacher of modern and classical literatures (second degré), Académie de Créteil (Paris and Versailles)

2022: Culture journalist and assistant editor, FNAC-DARTY, Ivry sur Seine (https://www.fnac.com/Le-blog-de-Marija/cc914/w-4)

  • Monitoring cultural news, steering the editorial line of L’Eclaireur (https://leclaireur.fnac.com)
  • Conception and editing of articles
  • Proficiency in WordPress, SEO and HTML

2019: Project manager for books – philosophy category, VULKAN, Belgrade.

  • Market research on philosophy books, selection of titles to be published and translated

Affiliations

2025-present: Visiting fellow, CEFRES, Czech Republic

2023-present: Research unit UMR 8224 Eur’Orbem (East-Central Europe and the Balkans), Sorbonne University/CNRS

Laboratoire junior at UMR 8224 Eur’Orbem under the title of “Passage”

Publications

October 2025: « Compte rendu de : Sacha Markovic, La Yougoslavie que racontent les humanistes marxistes : aux origines intellectuelles et culturelles des transitions yougoslaves, entre socialisme et nationalisme, des années 1920 aux années 1970 », Balkanologie (to be published)

Conferences

September 2025: Conference at Cres, Croatia: Ivan Illich, a century of critical thinking, on ways of addressing global crises. Presentation: “The influence of Ivan Illich: the case of Slavoj Žižek”, with Sorbonne University (collaborative work to be published)

CEFRES Team

Domenico Scagliusi – Research & CV

“The court of heirs: memory of the GULAG in contemporary Russian-language literature (2000-2022)”

Research areas 1 and 2: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices & Norms and transgressions

His research focuses on fiction published in the Russian language between 2000 and 2020 which places particular attention on the GULAG and the transmission of its memory in the post-Soviet space. These works, particularly significant at the turn of the 2010s (Jones 2024), form part of the global rise in the study of “post memory” (Hirsch 2012) within a political framework underscored by tensions between Russia and those other states which emerged from the dissolution of the USSR (Koposov 2018), as well as Putin’s increasingly repressive policies regarding his opponents.

His research therefore explores a period in which the memory of the GULAG is politically significant, as important questions are raised about the relationship between the state and its citizens, just as they are about Russia and its neighbours. This body of literature is henceforth considered as an expression of the variety of ideological positions which divide Russian-speaking intellectual debate and which find a major battleground in the history of Soviet repressions. In the absence of judicial sanctions for the violence committed by the Soviet state or of an agreed consensus on how to interpret those events, fiction allows the creation of a symbolic space where the act of storytelling is configured as a way of passing judgement on the past.

His thesis addresses these problems through a study of nine works of fiction published between 2001 and 2019, in which retrospective judgement is brought by a contemporary character to the writing of the novel: “the heir”. The development of this notion – already apparent in the field of memory studies (Jurgenson & Prstojevic 2012; Barjonet 2022; Panico 2024) – constitutes one of the issues in this research. Through the figure of the heir, these texts depict a process of subjective reinvestment in the past, examining both narrative development and the interplay between the discourses of various “memory actors” (Bogumił 2018) at work in the post-Soviet context.

 

Education

 

  • September 2022 – present: PhD student in Slavic studies at Sorbonne University / Eur’ORBEM under the supervision of Hélène Mélat and Luba Jurgenson.
  • 15-19th April 2024: Spring School 4EU+ Pluralities of Memory Spring School: Borderlands of Memory, organised by Charles University, Prague.
  • 11-15th July 2022: Summer School 4EU+ Digital memories: problems, methodologies, theories, organised by the University of Milan
  • 2020–2022: Master’s degree in Russian literature at Sorbonne University

 

Academic Publications (selection)

 

  • « Le cinéma en juge de l’histoire ? Le spectre de l’année 1938 dans le film Le capitaine Volkonogov s’est échappé », Revue des Etudes slaves, vol. XCV, n° 4, 2024, p. 565-580.
  • « Tchapaev devint un zombie, mais il passait encore à la télé. La littérature russe des années 2000 dans les décombres de l’idéologie soviétique », Les Grandes figures historiques dans les lettres et les arts, n° 14, 2025. Online : https://www.peren-revues.fr/figures-historiques/651?lang=en. 
  • « Zapretnye rukopisi. Arheologija semejnoj pamjati v sovremennoj russkoj literature » [Les manuscrits interdits. Archéologie de la mémoire familiale dans la littérature russe contemporaine], Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, n° 193/3, 2025, pp. 212-227.

 

Presentations (selection)

 

  • « D. Bykov, Z. Prilepin: 20 let opravdanij sovetskogo Terrora » [D. Bykov et Z. Prilepine en miroir : 20 ans de justifications des répressions soviétiques]. International seminar Being a writer under Putin. Inalco, Paris, March 2025.
  • « Echoes of Injustice: Russian-speaking literature coming to terms with the Soviet repressions ». Congrès annuel de l’Association canadienne des slavistes. Montréal, June 2024.
  • « Performing the Duty of Memory: Five Time Travel Narratives of the Great Patriotic War ». International seminar Historical Past and Contemporary Propaganda in the Global Context. Bard College et Smolny Beyond Borders, Berlin, June 2024.

 

Teaching Experience (selection)

 

  • September 2022 – May 2025: Course “Commentaire littéraire”, weekly seminar for second year Russian studies undergraduate students, Sorbonne University
  • September 2022 – May 2023: Course “Auteur, narrateur, personnage”, biweekly seminar for master’s students specialising in literature in the programme “Monde russe”, Sorbonne University

 

Organisation of academic sessions

 

  • April 2023 – present: series of sessions “L’Observatoire du Sensible” (Sorbonne University & University of Lille): series of sessions with contemporary Russian-speaking authors, among whom: Maria Stepanova, Daria Serenko, Galina Rymbu, Sergei Lebedev, Sasha Filipenko.
  • 18-20th June 2025: Conference of Collettivo Giovani Slavisti, University of Naples
  • 4-7th April 2023: Seminar Sexe, sexualité, relations sexuelles dans la science-fiction, 11th international seminar of Stella Incognita. Sorbonne University (UFR d’études slaves, faculté des Lettres) & l’École Polytechnique (Département Langues et Cultures et Chaire arts et sciences); National School of Decorative Arts – PSL and and Fondation Daniel et Nina Carasso; Research workshops at Eur’ORBEM (Sorbonne University) and LinX, junior workshop “Passage”; the Institute of Slavic Studies and Cinéma Le André des Arts

 

Other activities and affiliations

 

  • June 2025 – present: Member of the administrative council of the Institute of Slavic Studies
  • September 2024 – present: Co-coordinator (with Sarah Gruszka) of the field “Histoire, mémoire et arts” of the research collective Coruscant, European branch of the Russia Program at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies (IERES), George Washington University.
  • September 2023 – present: Representative of the Junior Workshop “Passage”, composed of doctoral students from UMR Eur’ORBEM
CEFRES Team

Garance Fromont – Research & CV

“Too loud a freedom: emergence of a Cinematographic New Wave in communist Czechoslovakia (1956-1968)”

CEFRES Research Area 1: Displacements, “Dépaysements” and Discrepancies: People, Knowledge and Practices

is a PhD candidate in Film Studies at the Cerilac research center (Université Paris Cité), where she is preparing a doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Frédérique Berthet. Her research focuses on the conditions that enabled the emergence of a New Wave within the nationalized film industry of 1960s Czechoslovakia. Often regarded as a derivative of the French New Wave that emerged a few years earlier, the specific material, economic, and aesthetic features of the Czechoslovak New Wave remain largely unknown, as do its influences and the dialogues it fostered with the broader landscape of “New Cinemas” that appeared across the world during the same period.

This doctoral project offers an economic, technical, and aesthetic model of this cinematic movement, with a particular focus on its two main hubs: the Barrandov Studios in Prague and the Koliba Studios in Bratislava. Building upon the work of contemporary Czech film historians, the dissertation seeks to demonstrate that this body of inventive films—often seen as visually and even ideologically breaking with the productions of the previous decade—should not be viewed as anomalies in Czechoslovakia’s film history. On the contrary, they are embedded within a consciously adopted national cultural policy. This research adopts a cultural history approach, combining social and political history, production and reception studies, the history of styles and artistic movements, and elements of New Cinema History. It places strong emphasis on archival sources—both institutional and private—that help shed light on these films from the perspective of their creators. Ultimately, the project questions the historical regime of this artistic movement by rethinking and problematizing its periodization.

Publications 
Books 

Cinématérialisms: New materialistic approaches of cinema and audiovisual, Editions Mimesis, 2025, (co-edited with Fanny Cardin, C. E. Harris, Charlie Hewison, Anastasia Rostan and Barnabé Sauvage).

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Thinking a cinema of the Armenian Diaspora (1991-2017), Collection Cinéma(s), L’Harmattan, 2022.
Papers
« By writing, (re)becoming the subject of one’s history, A cross-reading of the personal writings of Pavel Juráček and Daňa Horáková, in communist Czechoslovakia », Ecrire l’Histoire, vol. 25, 2025, forthcoming.
, « Jules Verne’s Cold War: Thinking about contemporary history in two Verne films by Karel Zeman », Conference proceeding Telling History: Narratives and History in Imaginary Cultures, Laboratoire des imaginaires, Wieworka Editions, 2024, pp. 179-202.
 « Translating Transgenerational Trauma into Images – A Comparative Perspective on the Works of Chantal Akerman and Gariné Torossian »,  co-authored with Valentine Auvinet, in Michèle Benhaïm, Nina Faruggia, Vladimir Broda (eds.), Oedipe au cinéma, collection « Psychoanalysis and Social Bond », series, L’Harmattan, 2024.
« Leave no trace, History Live? », Revue d’Histoire Culturelle, n°6, 2023.
 
Conference Papers (selection)
« A speechless cinema: Czechoslovak New Wave and censorship » Doctoral Seminar “Silence !”, Université Paris Cité, April 2025.
Round-table discussion, « Milan Kundera and cinema », with David Čeněk, Mathieu Lericq, Anastasia Mamaeva, Christian Paigneau, Sorbonne university, october 2025.
« From impossible speech to suspicious documents, when the archive invites criticism », Conference « Ten years of Kinétraces association: Archives and cinema », Sorbonne Nouvelle University, november 2023.
« The “Forman Trio”, Individuals and collective work in four Czechoslovak films”, Afeccav Congress, « Collectives, bands and collaborations in cinema and audiovisual », Toulouse Jean Jaurès University, June 2023.
« Comparison of methods » : conference and discussion on research methods with Jeanne Pommeau, Université Paris 8, October 2021.
CEFRES Team, Non classé

Sabina Vassileva – Research & CV

“Gender of metabolism: enacting sexed bodies at the intersection of metabolic and sex hormones”

Research Area 2 – Norms and Transgressions

Contact: sabina.vassileva@soc.cas.cz

Sabina Vassileva is a doctoral candidate at Charles University, Prague. Her PhD dissertation, entitled Gender of metabolism: enacting sexed bodies at the intersection of metabolic and sex hormones contributes to CEFRES research area 2.

My dissertation project draws on the growing recognition that the increasing prevalence of metabolic conditions such as diabetes and obesity is shaped by a complex interplay of biosocial factors. These include (epi)genetics, contemporary food environments saturated with ultra-processed foods, socioeconomic precarity, psychosocial distress, and as I argue gender norms, roles, and relations, including gendered reproductive labor. I am particularly interested in how bodies undergoing hormonal fluctuations face heightened risks of metabolic complications due to the intra-actions between declining estrogen and testosterone levels, glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, insulin sensitivity, microbiome shifts, and gendered norms of care. These dynamics remain underexplored, as biomedical research has historically privileged stabilized (male) bodies in clinical trials and research design.

In my dissertation, I explore how biosocial gendered relations shape metabolic health and diagnoses such as diabetes and obesity. I examine how gender is enacted in metabolic health along three axes: self-care practices, clinical care, and biomedical research. My focus is on the hormonal intra-actions between metabolic and sex steroid hormones. I draw on a Baradian material-semiotic framework and build on critical feminist anthropology of hormones, which has foregrounded how hormones not only carry gendered imaginaries but also function as technoscientific tools of sex regulation and bodily governance. While sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone are often studied in isolation, their intra-actions with metabolic hormones like insulin or glucagon-like peptides remain largely sidelined in sociological research. To address this gap my work combines feminist anthropology of hormones with the notion of postindustrial metabolism that enables me to trace the mutual constitutions of gender and metabolism.

Methodologically, my PhD adopts a mixed-methods approach. I combine qualitative ethnography (semi-structured interviews and participant observation)—exploring embodied experiences and everyday practices of “doing metabolism” and “doing gender”—with critical discourse analysis of biomedical research on metabolism. My ethnographic partners include people with diabetes or obesity who undergo synthetic hormonal therapies: individuals navigating menopause, andropause, or gender-affirming hormone treatments. These bodily transitions are critical sites where gendered and metabolic regulation is negotiated. Through this research, I investigate how gendered metabolic norms are not only discursively repeated but also materially metabolized—becoming embedded in the design of metabolic technologies and medications used in care. For this purpose I use visual ethnography tools like hormonal mapping.

By tracing how gender is materially metabolized in bodies, care practices, and biomedical knowledge, my project offers a feminist rethinking of metabolism as a deeply gendered and politically regulated process. By focusing on hormonal intra-actions, the project foregrounds fluid and dynamic bodily processes and gives voice to bodies that are marginalized in biomedical research on metabolism and whose mutual shaping of sexed embodiments and living in gendered social relations is not sufficiently considered.

CV

Education

  • from 2024 till present: PhD student, Sociology, Prague.
  • 2021-2024: MA, Anthropology, Charles University, Prague
  • 2017-2021: BA, Philosophy, Charles University, Prague.

Participation in research projects

  • Since 2024: PhD-participant Technocultures of extended metabolism, [GA24-12497S], project based at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
  • Since 2025: Junior researcher, Strategie AV21: Umělá inteligence pro vědu a společnost, Využití AI při managementu diabetu 1. typu, project based at the Czech Academy of Sciences.
  • Since 2025: Junior researcher, Platform workers on the czech labour market, project based at the Czech Academy of Sciences

Recent academic activities (selected)

  • June 2025: “Looped in within algorithms: A biosocial case study of a diabetic living with artificial pancreas,” paper presented at STS nordic conference, Stockholm, Sweden
  • June 2025: “Unwriting design injustice: hormonal-algorithmic tinkering
  • with open-source diabetes care technology,” paper presented at SIEF conference, Aberdeen, UK
  • May, 2025: “Attending to risky attachments: a study of a DIY loop for diabetes care, paper presented at an academic workshop “STS concepts for the life as aftermath”, Munich, Germany
  • March, 2025: “Queer metabolism: de/stabilizations of sex and gender binaries in biomedical research on gender affirming care and metabolism”, paper presented at STS HUB conference, Berlin, Germany
  • November, 2024: “Opening the black box of algorithms,” invited lecture within undergraduate course “Společnost, technologie, tělenost,” Faculty of humanities, Charles University, Prague
  • July, 2024: “Digital interfaces, real inequalities: exploring algorhitmic opacity in the platformised Czech delivery sector,” paper presented at EASA conference, Barcelona, Spain.
  • July, 2024: “Chrononormativita z perspektivy genderu a politiky těla, “ invited lecture at Woods sympozium “Time at the tips of conifers”, Orlické mountains, Czech republic
  • June, 2024: “More than Numbers: Health, Digitalization, and Bioethnography,” paper presented at the 15th MAYS Annual Meeting, Bologna, Italy.

Recent publications

  • Borisova V., Vassileva S. 2025. „Caring for more-than-human metabolic health: Self-tracking technologies as tools of calculation and communication in obesity and type 1 diabetes care“. Archivio antropologico mediterraneo. 27 (1). http://journals.openedition.org/aam/10112

Canovas O, Conan L, Gille P, Martinez A, Miranda CK, Palmea K, Roubi T, Suarez M, Vassileva S & Aline Wiame, 2024. « La nature en guerre contre la vie. Une expérimentation d’écriture cyborg entre Guattari et Haraway », Sextant, 41. http://journals.openedition.org/sextant/11409