Vlasta Švoger, PhD
Vlasta Švoger was born in Zagreb where she finished primary and secondary school. She graduated History and German language and literature from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. At the same faculty, she obtained a master’s degree in 2000 and defended doctoral dissertation on the subject “Croatian Liberal Press in Revolutionary Period– Saborske novine, Slavenski Jug, Südslawische Zeitung and Jugoslavenske novine (1848-1852)” in 2004 (supervised by Nikša Stančić).
From 1992 to 1994 she was teaching German and History in primary schools in Zagreb. Since April 1, 1995 she has been employed at the Croatian Institute of History and the member of its Department for 19th-Century History (since 2012 as a senior scientific associate). In March 2019 she was elected to the rank of a senior scientific adviser in permanent position.
During summer 1992 she was a DAAD scholar at the University Justus Liebig in Gießen, Germany.
She taught the undergraduate courses on “Croatian Nation in the 19th Century” (in academic years 2000/01 to 2002/03) as well as on the the 19-th century history (in academic years 2010/11 to 2013/14) at the University of Zagreb, Centre for Croatian Studies.
She was a member of the Organization Committee of the international conference Hrvatska 1848. i 1849. (Croatia in the years 1848 and 1849), held in Zagreb in October 21-23, 1998. At the First Congress of Croatian Historians, she organized and moderated the Section on the Media and Making of Public Opinion (Zagreb, December 9-11, 1999), as well as the Section on the History of School System and Education at the 5th Congress of Croatian Historians (Zadar, October 5-8, 2016). She was a member of the Scientific Committee of the international conference “Being a Student in the Habsburg Monarchy” (Zagreb, May 18-19, 2017). She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the international conference commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Croatian-Hungarian Compromise (Zagreb, November 22, 2018).
Since May 2014, she is a head of the Department for the 19th century history at the Croatian institute of History, and since December 2012 a head of the Institute’s Ethic Committee.
From 1999 to 2002 she was a member of the editorial board of the internationally indexed scientific magazine Časopis za suvremenu povijest (Journal of Contemporary History); from 2000 to 2002 the secretary of the same journal. From 2004 to 2007 she was a member of the editorial board and an assistant Editor-in-chief of the internationally indexed journal Review of Croatian History. Since January 2009 she has been a member of the editorial board of the Povijesni prilozi (Historical Contributions), also an internationally indexed journal. She participated in several evaluation committees of MA and doctoral theses. She is a member of the Croatian National Committee for Historical Sciences (HNOPZ), Society for Croatian History and the International Society for Intellectual History.
Švoger participated in two international scientific projects and in the process of submitting of two international projects proposals, as a proposed national coordinator.
Since 2009, she was contributing to international projects Education of Church Elite in Central Europe. St. Augustine College for Diocesan Priests (“Frintaneum”) in Vienna as a Post-Graduate and Networking Institution of the Monarchy 1816-1918 and The Lexicon of Bishops from the Habsburg Monarchy 1806-1918., coordinated by the Institute of Church History at the Universtiy of Vienna, Faculty of Catholic Theology and the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. As a national coordinator for Croatia, in cooperation with theUniversities of Tübingen, Prague, Ljubljana, Warsaw, Kiev and Chernivtsi and Villa Decius in Krakow V. Švoger participated 2015 in submitting a project proposal Cultural Messengers: European Circulators of Texts, Ideas, Events in response to a Call REFLECTIVE-2-2015-Emergence and transmission of European cultural heritage and Europeanization (Horizon 2020). Later that year she participated in submitting a project proposal titled Kulturvermittler_innen Europas, (coordinated by the University of Tübingen in cooperation with partners from Croatia, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Ukraine) as a response to the call “International Cooperation in Education and Research, Region Middle East and South East Europe” of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research of Germany.
Švoger also participated as a team member in the national projects “History of Political Thought and Political Parties in Croatia from the eighteenth to the twentieth century”, “Political life in the Croatian society from the second half of the nineteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century”, and “Political life in the Croatian society from 1840s to 1940s”, funded by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of Republic of Croatia, as well as in the project “From protomodernization to modernization of Croatian School System (18th and 19th centuries), funded by the Croatian Science foundation.
She was working on the professional edition of historic terms for the German-Croatian universal dictionary (Croat. Njemačko-hrvatski univerzalni rječnik; authors: Renate Hansen-Kokoruš, Josip Matešić, Zrinka Pečur-Medinger, Marija Znika; Zagreb, 2005). She wrote several lexicographic papers for the Croatian Bibliographical Lexicon and other publications, published by the Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography.
As a result of her scientific work she published three monographs, two co-authored collections of sources and co-edited two books. She also published more than 50 scientific papers or chapters in internationally indexed journals in Croatia and abroad or in books. She presented original papers at many conferences in Croatia and abroad. The main field of her research is intellectual, political, cultural and social history of Croatia of the nineteenth century, Croatian journalism, the role of the press and phenomenon of publicity in that period. In the last few years, she has been conducting research on the modernisation of the Croatian school system in the nineteenth century.