Marta Verginella


Marta Verginella is a Slovenian historian from the Slovene minority in Italy in Trieste, notable as one of the most prominent contemporary Slovene historians. Together with Alenka Puhar, she is considered a pioneer in the history of family relations in the Slovene Lands.
Prof. dr. Marta Verginella is Full Professor of General History of the 19th Century and Theory of History at the Department of History of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.

Life

She was born in Trieste, Italy. She attended Slovene language schools in Trieste. In 1984, she graduated from history at the University of Trieste under the supervision of the renowned social anthropologist and feminist historian Luisa Accati. For five years she worked as a high school teacher in the schools with Slovene as language of instruction, both in Trieste and Gorizia. In 1995, she obtained her PhD at the University of Ljubljana under the supervision of Peter Vodopivec, with a thesis on the changing attitudes towards death in the 19th century rural peripheries of Trieste.

Work

She has been visiting professor at several universities in Italy, as well as at the University of Valencia in Spain, and the University of Primorska in Koper, Slovenia. Since 1996, she has taught theory of historiography and social history of 19th century Europe at the University of Ljubljana.
She has written on a variety of topics, including social and demographic history, history of historiography, cultural history of 19th and 20th century, women studies, national studies, border studies and the history of the Slovene minority in Italy. She rose to prominence with her studies on the relationship between the urban and rural societies in Habsburg Istria.
Particularly outstanding are also her microhistory studies on the daily life during World War II. In the last decade, she has also written extensively on history of intellectuals in the border area between Slovenia and Italy. He essay about the issue, entitled The Border of the Others became a best-seller in Italy in 2008.

Selected works

In Italian