Zorica Siročić
UGO business card: LINK
Zorica Siročić is a sociologist and political scientist currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Graz. Prior to this position, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2020–2021). She is the co-founder and co-speaker of the university-wide research cluster Media and Social Movements and of the Political Sociology section of the Austrian Society for Sociology. She is also a co-editor of the Political Sociology – Sociology of the Political book series at Springer. She teaches BA and MA courses in political sociology, methods of academic work, and the sociology of gender.
In her research, she focuses on contentious and comparative gender politics and social movements. She has received several awards for her research including the Gabriele Possanner Award for Excellence in Gender Research from the Austrian Ministry of Science, Education and Research (2019) and the Johanna Dohnal Fellowship from the Johanna Dohnal Archive (2015).
Her monograph, Festivals as Reparative Gender Politics: Millennial Feminism in Southeastern Europe (Routledge, 2023; AWSS Honorable Mention 2024) challenges conventional assumptions of politics as a primarily antagonistic activity, arguing instead how millennial feminist and queer activist festivals can be interpreted as a form of "reparative" politics. Drawing on rich data from multi-sited ethnography, including interviews, participant observation, and performances, the monograph offers a conceptual framework for understanding politics beyond the usual antagonistic, disruptive, and discursive modes. It demonstrates how political action pleading for alternative practices can be reparative, creative, and playful.
Current habilitation project
In her current cumulative habilitation project, Siročić explores creativity, temporality, narratives, and emotions in contemporary contentious politics. The project combines conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions that address repertoires crucial to understanding the latent and manifest phases of contentious action and their outcomes. The project builds upon and expands different sociological research fields, notably bringing political sociology, social movement studies, sociology of gender, sociology of time, sociology of emotion, and critical event studies into conversation. The results are conceptual contributions to sociology, in particular by proposing and elaborating on novel concepts such as "creative contention," "contentious gender politics," or "temporal activist repertoires" (TAR), or by closing certain empirical gaps, such as investigating the outcomes of anti-gender movements or the role of negative emotions, such as anger and fear, within celebratory and festive protest events.
Selected publications:
Guest editor of the special issue:
Siročić, Zorica. 2025. “Creative contention: Creativity in/of social movements”, Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, 13(2). (Part of the online first)
Book:
Siročić, Zorica. 2023. Festivals as Reparative Gender Politics: Millennial Feminism in Southeastern Europe. New York: Routledge, series Gender and Comparative Politics (AWSS, 2024, Honorable Mention, in the competition for the Best Book in Slavic Women’s and Gender Studies).
Articles and book chapters:
Siročić, Zorica. 2025. Creative contention: a conceptual proposal, Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest 13(2), 1–18, https://doi.org/10.3167/cont.2025.130201
Siročić, Zorica. 2025. Anger in festivals: Contradiction in terms or a desirable part of the program?, Emotion, Space and Society 55, doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2025.101087
Siročić, Zorica. 2025. When and why do anti-gender movements fail?, European Journal of Politics and Gender (published online ahead of print 2025). Retrieved Jan 13, 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/25151088Y2024D000000068
Siročić, Zorica. 2024. Multi-sited research as a creative methodology for critical event studies, in Platt, L. et al. (eds.), Creative Research Methods for Critical Event Studies. Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032686424-3
Siročić, Zorica. 2024. Temporal repertoires in contemporary activism: The cases of Fridays for Future, 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and ‘It’s Thursday Again!’, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, DOI: 10.1080/23254823.2024.2335159
Anna Lavizzari & Zorica Siročić. 2022. Contentious gender politics in Italy and Croatia: diffusion of transnational anti-gender movements to national contexts, Social Movement Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14742837.2022.2052836
Der Beitrag wurde auf die Shortlist für den „2022 Britta Baumgarten Memorial Prize“ gesetzt.