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Postcolonial Europe and Its Intellectuals: Feminist and Transnational Perspectives with Sandra Ponzanesi This episode features a lecture by Sandra Ponzanesi. Sandra is a member of the EUTERPE consortium and the Principal Investigator for Utrecht University. She is Chair and full Professor of Media, Gender and Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, where she is also the Founding Director of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative (PCI). She has published widely in the field of media, postcolonial studies, digital migration and cinema, with a particular focus on Postcolonial Europe from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. She is also currently the project leader for ‘Virtual Reality as Empathy Machine: Media, Migration and the Humanitarian Predicament’ funded by NWO (Dutch Research Council). The episode also includes an introduction given by Jasmina Lukić. Jasmina is the Principal Leader for the EUTERPE project, Professor with the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University in Vienna, and the CEU Coordinator for the GEMMA Program in Women's Studies and Gender Studies. In this lecture, Sandra Ponzanesi discusses how Europe is not just a continent, a mere geographical space that continually redefines its boundaries and peripheries, but an ideal. It is the cradle of Enlightenment and scientific revolutions, and therefore of Western modernity and democracy. However, Europe could not be thought of without its inheritance of violence and the disruptive forces of colonialism. As Stuart Hall has written “I am in but not of Europe” (2003), signalling the ongoing practices of inclusion and exclusion that challenge the EU’s much-promoted motto of ‘Unity in Diversity.’ Postcolonial intellectuals, writers, artists and activists have engaged in rethinking and reimagining the spaces and ideals of Europe, widening its scope and bringing in the margins. These intellectuals are neither universal nor specific, bound to nations or languages, but transnational subjects, always crossing boundaries and orders, constituting solidarities, networks and connections within and beyond Europe. The lecture was originally delivered on 06/09/2024 at the third biannual EUTERPE Doctoral School, held at Central European University in Vienna, Austria. The episode transcript can be accessed here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:868b4907-1202-4c7c-a8d2-c5a013018a28 . If you would like to view the slides that were presented alongside the lecture they can be accessed here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:2bac55c1-762e-48c8-aa87-3b1ecb57bd19 . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was edited by: Evangeline Scarpulla Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Kris Országhová Central European University Project Administrator Kris Orszaghova (they/them) holds a Master’s in Artistic Research from Hogeschool Voor de Kunsten Utrecht and a PhD in Sociology from Charles University in Prague. Kris Orszaghova (they/them) holds a Master’s in Artistic Research from Hogeschool Voor de Kunsten Utrecht and a PhD in Sociology from Charles University in Prague. As an artist-athlete-scholar, they explore the intersections of art and social inquiry. Their research focuses on bodies moving and shifting, meandering and at times floating between the urban centres and peripheries, borders both real and imaginary, between hopes and disillusionments, despair and commitment, discipline and disobedience. Currently, Kris is a visiting faculty and coordinator at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University and a junior coordinator for EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective, a Marie Curie Doctoral Network. In addition to their research, Kris has participated in various exhibitions, including "To Seminar" at bak (basis voor actuale kunst) "Poetry & Performance: The Eastern European Perspective" at Nová synagóga in Žilina, or "Possibility of Preserving" at Kunsthalle Bratislava. Publications: "Turn the Volume Up! Boxing Hearts and Beats", featured in Boxing, Narrative and Culture (Routledge, 2023) "The Gender of Bruising: A Critical Literature Review on Gender in Boxing," published in Sociology Compass (2023).

Laura Bak Cely Laura Bak is a Gender and Diversity Ph.D. student at the Universidad de Oviedo. She holds a B.A. in Literary Studies from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, with a minor in Philosophy, and an M.A in Literature from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Her work has focused on the problems and representations of space in exiled Latin American Jewish women’s autobiographical writing, emphasizing in the search and creation of places that have disappeared in the current geopolitical maps. Her research continues to explore the subject of ‘autocartography’ within life-writings by migrant women through the lens of counter-mapping, spatial justice, and geocriticism. Research topic The subject of imagination and representation of lost places in life-writings has been at the centre of my research trajectory. In this research phase, I plan to study how migrant women in Europe produce life-writings in an exercise of creating alternative representations of the spaces they inhabit and transit. I intend to designate this type of writing as counter-autocartographies as they challenge dominant cartographic representations and weave counter-maps that represent the perspective and understanding of the spaces dwelt by migrant women. Previous Next

Ruins, Fragments, and the Word: War, Memory, and Utopian Vision in H.D.’s Late Poetry with Raffaella Baccolini This lecture is dedicated to the memory of Susan Stanford Friedman. Susan Stanford Friedman's work was seminal for the conception of EUTERPE, and we deeply grieve her passing. She was not only a highly respected and influential scholar, but also a special friend known for her warm personality and intellectual generosity. This lecture series was created in her honour, to celebrate her legacy and to keep her presence alive. This episode features a lecture delivered by Raffaella Baccolini, a professor of Gender Studies and American and British Literature at the University of Bologna, Forlì Campus. Baccolini completed her PhD under the supervision of Susan Stanford Friedman, and has since published widely on women’s writing, H.D., modernism, dystopia and science fiction, trauma and memory, and Young Adult literature. The episode also includes a short introduction given by Jasmina Lukić, Professor with the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University in Vienna and the Principal Leader for the EUTERPE project. This lecture examines H.D.’s Trilogy (1944–1946) as a poetic response to the devastation of the London Blitz, where ruins and fragments become the ground for a visionary reimagining of culture and survival. Written amid destruction, Trilogy does not retreat into nostalgia but forges continuity through acts of remembrance and re-vision. Drawing on mythological, religious, and cultural palimpsests, H.D. enacts an alchemy of language that both records trauma and insists on the regenerative power of words. This lecture was originally delivered on 17/09/2025 at the fifth biannual EUTERPE Doctoral School, held at The University of Bologna in Bologna, Italy. The episode transcript can be accessed here : https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:b1d8e967-5a02-4d2c-a687-cbe6bb5453f3 . The accompanying lecture slides can be viewed here : https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:dac1b378-434b-4f01-b2d3-097fe0e47001 . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was edited by Evangeline Scarpulla. Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Coventry University Katherine Wimpenny Principal Investigator Jaya Jacobo Researcher Suzanne Clisby Special Project Advisor and Supervisory Expert Advisor

Sparkly Pearls in the Dustbin of Literature – in conversation with Olja Alvir In this episode of the EUTERPE podcast library, host Tamara Cvetković engages in a wide-ranging conversation with Olja Alvir, a multifaceted literary scholar, writer, translator, and journalist who examines the complexities of identity and migration. Born in Yugoslavia before moving to Austria in 1992, Alvir discusses her academic "excavation" of early Yugoslav partisan films to reveal their artistic value. She reflects on her position as a writer in exile whose homeland no longer exists, and the linguistic friction of navigating between German, English, and Serbo-Croatian (BCMS). Alvir candidly recounts the challenges of being a working-class woman in the male-dominated field of physics—a "heartbreak" that eventually led her toward a career in journalism, poetry, and fiction, where she now uses scientific concepts as raw material for her writing. She also explores her reputation as an unapologetic "shitposter" and enfant terrible of Austrian journalism, detailing how she used a radical online persona to highlight police repression and discrimination of migrants. From her award-winning MA thesis to her latest cryptic novel centered on the agency of "things," Alvir focuses on materials often disregarded as trash. This episode dives into the "dustbin" of literature and public opinion to look for the sparkly pearls that might still be found there. The podcast transcript is available here . For more information about Olja’s work visit https://olja.at/ This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/, or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project. This episode was produced and edited by Tamara Cvetković. Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers. This episode is also available on soundcloud.

A Conversation with Marta Olivi on Translation In this podcast, doctoral candidate Evangeline Scarpulla speaks with translator Marta Olivi. During the conversation we discuss Marta’s four major English to Italian translation projects: Canta Ancora, Ragazza (2022), a translation of Jacqueline Roy’s The Fat Lady Sings (2000); L’Antropocene Inconscio (2022), a translation of Mark Bould’s The Anthropocene Unconscious (2021); Paradiso Terrestre (2024), a translation of Laura Vandenberg’s State of Paradise (2024); and selected poems from Molly Brodak's The Cipher (2020). Olivi also talks about her approach to translation work, the intersections between translation and academic research, and the importance of translation in today's transnational literary landscape. We hope that you enjoy listening to this podcast. Since recording this episode, Marta Olivi has completed three additional translation projects: Dolce il Frutto, Aspra la Terra (2025), a translation of Rebecca Ley’s Sweet Fruit, Sour Land (2018); Isabella Nagg e il Vaso di Basilico (2025), a translation of Oliver Darkshire’s Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil (2025); and Dungeon Crawler Carl: Il Giorno del Giudizio (2026), a translation of Matt Dinniman’s Carl's Doomsday Scenario (2021). The episode transcript can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by Evangeline Scarpulla . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla, and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

University of Oviedo Isabel Carrera Suárez Principal Investigator Emilia M. Durán-Almarza Researcher Carla Rodríguez González Researcher

"I am not a sedentary person; I am peacefully restless": A Conversation with Elvira Dones How does an artist listen to the pain of others? How can writing represent and respect their voices? In this episode, Albanian Italian author, and English PEN Award winner, Elvira Dones talks to Alice Flinta about her process of writing, and how her life experiences inform the creative process. From life in Albania and her escape in 1988, to the asylum experience in Switzerland, to the documentary work across borders (Albania, Italy, Kosovo and the U.S.) that informs her literary endeavours, Dones offers intimate and thought-provoking insights into being transnational and living transnationally. For more info on Elvira Dones’s events and publications, see her official website http://www.elviradones.com/ Sworn Virgin is available in Clarissa Botsford’s English translation (And Other Stories, 2014). The episode transcript can be accessed here . The English translation can be accessed here . This episode is part of the EUTERPE Podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project. This episode was produced and edited by: Alice Flinta. With thanks to the Creativity Lab and Podcast studio team at the University of York . Thank you to Alexander Walker and Lilu for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Evangeline Petra Scarpulla Interested in speculative and imaginative genre criticism, contemporary feminist literary theory, and decolonizing the canon, Evangeline Scarpulla holds a BA in Comparative Literature with Honours from King’s College London and an MSc in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. During her MSc she explored how contemporary fantasy writers are reimagining the conventions of the genre through her dissertation entitled ‘Folklore in Fantasy: Challenging the Western Conventions of the Genre through a Critical Comparison of Marlon James’s Black Leopard Red Wol f and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings .’ Research topic Building off her previous explorations into broadening representation in imaginative genres and global literature, Evangeline’s PhD thesis will discuss how transnational feminist authors in Europe communicate narratives of resistance through ‘minor’ literary genres, including fantastic and speculative fiction, magical realism, and graphic novels. Investigating the close relationship between form and content, the thesis will discuss how many migrant female authors reach to border-defying and experimentative genres because their characteristics mirror their own liminal social positioning and hybrid identities. By challenging prevailing notions of fixed genres and truth vs. fantasy, these narratives overturn traditional binaries and ideas of nationalism, creating a unique transnational community of writers, readers, and thinkers. The research will be conducted in conversation with postcolonial and contemporary genre critics such as Homi K. Bhaba, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Nnedi Okorafor and Helen Young, contributing to efforts to expand the subjectivities represented in our ‘collective imagination.’ (Thomas, 2019). Previous Next

Emilia M. Durán-Almarza University of Oviedo Researcher Emilia M. Durán-Almarza is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oviedo, Spain. She specializes in Caribbean and Afro-diasporic postcolonial writing and performance. She regularly publishes her research at international peer reviewed journals. In EUTERPE, she serves as leader of WP6, “The role of transnational literatures in the decolonization of understandings of gender within the European academe”, where she supervises Uthara Geetha’s PhD project. Her research focus includes excavating the presence of Anglophone African and Caribbean women writers in Europe. Publications: Durán-Almarza, E.M., Kabir, A.J., & Rodríguez González, C. (Eds.). (2019). Debating the Afropolitan (1st ed.). Routledge. Durán-Almarza, E.M., Rodríguez González, C., & Clisby, S. (Eds.). (2022). Performing Cultures of Equality (1st ed.). Routledge.

Jaya Jacobo Coventry University Researcher Jaya Jacobo is a transfeminine thinker and artist based at Coventry University where she currently does work on trans feminist pedagogies in literature, art and performance. She has worked alongside travesti and transsexual women artists, scholars and community workers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well as with trans, queer and nonbinary Filipina/x/o performers from the Philippines and Filipino diaspora abroad. Jacobo was a former Board Member of the Society of Trans Women of the Philippines (STRAP), a former President of the Film Desk of the Young Critics Circle (YCC) of the Philippines, a Founding Co-Editor of Queer Southeast Asia: A Transgressive Journal of Literary Art and Co-Editor of BKL: Bikol/Bakla, Anthology of Bikolnon Gay Trans Queer Writing . Jaya is the author of Arasahas , her debut volume of poetry in Filipino from Savage Mind Publishing House. Publications: Jacobo, Jaya. 2024. “A Love That Burns Hot Enough to Last: Scenes from Trans Tropical Love”. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics 23 (1):18-24. Adriany, V, Bong, SA, Curtin, B, Jacobo, J & Luther, JD. 2022. "Pedagogy of queer studies beyond empire." in S Tang & HY Wijaya (eds), Queer Southeast Asia. 1 edn, Taylor and Francis - Balkema, pp. 243-265.