Liana Popa, BA BA MA

Former Research Assistant 

Liana Popa is a gender historian, specializing in Romanian History of the 20th century. Between 2022 and 2025 she was active in numerous internal and external academic research projects at the Institute of Contemporary History, University of Vienna, i.e. as HERESSEE's student research assistant from October 2023 to April 2025.

She received several funding grants and carried out three archival and field research trips to Romania for her master's thesis on abortion-relation maternal mortality during Romania's Ceausescu regime. The thesis won the "GAIN Gender & Agency Prize" in 2025. 

After completing her master's degree with honors in June 2025, she worked as a free historian and participated in several historical exhibition projects in Vienna and beyond.

For her dissertation project, starting in January 2026, she will investigate gender, body and environment within the context of refugeedom in Romania during World War I.