Anja Koletnik is a transfeminist queer activist and freelance academic from Slovenia. They have 8 years of experience in LGBTQ+ activism and are the founder and director of Slovenia's first transgender specific NGO Institute Transfeminist Iniciative TransAkcija. Prior to studying at Central European University they graduated from Faculty of Social Work, University of Ljubljana. Anja has been active as a volunteer within the NGO sector since 2000, working in the fields of youth work, domestic and gender based violence, mental health and substance abuse. Anja holds an MA in Gender Studies from Central European University where they graduated in 2014.
"Anja attended the 1 year MA program of gender studies and it was certainly an intense year. The A learning and teaching approaches were very different to what I have experienced in previous education and deeply cherished the strong encouragement of critical thinking and debate among students. All the required reading offered in depth understandings of scholarship, which I still find beneficial in my work and everyday life as a political subject of society. The environment can be quite competitive though, sometimes overly competitive, which can lead to distress or lessening of mental health. The gender department is very special though, I very much enjoyed the feminist queer bubble we created together."
Anja is the director of Institute Transfeminist Initiative TransAkcija, which I founded in 2014. Institute TransAkcija enables support, informing, empowerment and alliance building of transgender people in Slovenia. Their current work is mostly focusing on introducing and including the topics of genders, gender identities and transgender / non-cisnormative identities to Slovenian social justice activism and academia and encompasses an array of activities, from counseling and leading support groups to dialogues with media and lobbying and advocacy at national level. They are also regularly lecture at faculties at the University of Ljubljana and participate at various panel discussions, where I mostly address the topics of transgender studies, queer theory, embodiments and feminist new materialisms, but am also very interested fat studies.
Their future plans include breaking the gender binary.