This section is reserved for presentations of WEMov’s Early Career Investigators (ECIs). For newsletter #7, we are featuring two young colleagues actively involved in WEMov: Alba Comino from WG2, and WG3 member Neja Blaj Hribar.
Alba Comino has a dual background in Archaeology (BA, MA, PhD Universidad de Murcia), and Musicology (AD, Conservatorio de Murcia, and MA, Universidad de La Rioja) with a focus on Digital Humanities (PGCert, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia). In January 2023, she started her new job as a postdoctoral researcher at Universidade Nova de Lisboa, thanks to a MSCA Fellowship. Currently, she is working on the project: “Rereading European Cultural Heritage in Latin American Women Writers’ Travel Literature of the Early 20th Century: contrasting testimonies to build inclusive historical discourses”. She is also a member of the research groups “Pelagios Network” and “Archeology and Material History of Women and Gender Network: Research, Mediation and Communication”.
Dr Comino’s research is placed at the intersection between Cultural History Studies and Digital Humanities. She is particularly interested in the complex relationship between identity and cultural heritage driven by postcolonial and gender approaches. So, her research focuses on how societies use the past to build meaning in the present, especially through recognising women as historical agents and analysing memory and material culture as identity elements. She believes connecting different societies through their cultural heritage is just one of the many possibilities Digital Humanities offers to promote tolerance, respect and admiration for different identities.
For more than ten years, her experience in international and interdisciplinary research teams has allowed her to face interesting professional challenges in combining new technologies with cultural heritage. She collaborates with different research projects, such as “Goodbye reading glasses: a Machine Learning experiment on handwritten documents” (Lancaster University), and “Reinventando los museos de arqueología y antropología. La visibilización de los grupos marginados por la Historia. Construyendo una sociedad igualitaria” (Autonomous University of Madrid).
Dr Comino has published journal articles and book chapters related to gender studies, for example:
- Garrido, Raquel Liceras, Alba Comino & Patricia Murrieta Flores. “Mujeres en el Catálogo Monumental de España: discursos arqueológicos sobre Prehistoria y Edad del Hierro en las provincias de Ávila, Soria y Burgos,” Complutum 33 (2022): 269–288. [PDF]
- Mira, Ignasi Grau & Alba Comino Comino. “Mujeres en los modelos sociales y las estructuras de poder del sureste de Iberia (siglos V-IV a. n. e.): una lectura desde los espacios funerarios,” Trabajos de Prehistoria 78 (2021): 309–324. [PDF]
Neja Blaj Hribar is PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of History, and a research assistant at the Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana.
She studied History and Comparative Literature at the University of Ljubljana, where she completed her master’s thesis on liberal political propaganda in literature and press in Carniola during the fin de siècle. Since 2016, she has been working at the Institute of Contemporary History in the Research Infrastructure programme. First, she coordinated the project « Collection of Data on Military Deaths of the First World War in Slovenia » (2016–2018) and in 2019 she took over the management of the project « Censuses of Slovenia 1830–1931 ». In the latter, the digitised censuses are transcribed and datasets are created. The censuses are the main source for her dissertation, in which she studies immigration to Ljubljana (Drava banovina) from other parts of the Yugoslav lends in the first half of the 20th century. Her thesis research also deals with migration narratives and problems of nationalist migration discourse.
Her research interests also include historical demography, digital humanities, feminism, and intellectual and literary history. As of 2020, she is part of two project teams granted by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS). One focuses on nationalism in education through history, the other on border studies.
She is a co-founder of the online media portal spol.si (focusing on gender related issues) and a member of the editorial board (editor-in-chief from 2017 to 2019).
- BLAJ HRIBAR, Neja. Popisi prebivalstva 1857–1931 : predstavitev vira, podatki in analiza. [Population Censuses 1857–1931: Presentation of the Source, Data, and Analysis]. Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 62, no. 3, (2022): 8–29. DOI.
- BLAJ HRIBAR, Neja. Long live progress, long live light! : a history of the electrification of Ljubljana. Edited by Sever, Kristina. Ljubljana: Elektro, 2020.
- BLAJ HRIBAR, Neja, OJSTERŠEK, Mihael, PANČUR, Andrej, ŠORN, Mojca. V prvi svetovni vojni padli in umrli vojaki z ozemlja Slovenije. Vojaška zgodovina 15, no. 2 (2019), 10–22. Access HERE
- BLAJ HRIBAR, Neja. Pomanjkanje v Ljubljani po velikonočnem potresu leta 1895. In: ŠORN, Mojca (ed.). Lakote in pomanjkanje : slovenski primer. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2018. pp. 113–132. Access HERE.
- BLAJ HRIBAR, Neja. Socialni program KNS/SLS skozi prizmo Slovenskega naroda (1890-1914) [The KNS/SLS Social Programme through the Prism of the Slovenski Narod Newspaper (1890-1914)]. Prispevki za novejšo zgodovino 57, no. 1 (2017): 112–124. DOI.
- BLAJ HRIBAR, Neja. « On bo seveda prihodnjič inseriral » : oglaševanje v Slovenskem narodu in Slovencu na prelomu 19. in 20. stoletja. In: Studen, Andrej (ed.) Od prvih oglasov do interneta: k zgodovini oglaševanja na Slovenskem. Ljubljana: Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino, 2016, Pp. 59–71. Access HERE.
- BLAJ HRIBAR, Neja. « Ločitev škofa-duhovnika in škofa-politika ni iznajdba tega peklenskega slovenskega liberalizma. »: duhovščina in Rimskokatoliška cerkev v publicističnih ter literarnih delih Slovenskega naroda (1890–1914) [“Separation of the Bishop-priest from the Bishop-politician Was not an Invention of this Infernal Slovenian Liberalism.” The Clergy and Roman Catholic Church in Journalistic and Literary Pieces of Slovenski narod (1890-1914)]. Zgodovina za vse: vse za zgodovino 21, no. 2 (2014): 19–31. Access HERE.