Susan Zimmermann

Susan Zimmermann’s research has been concerned with bringing to bear a critical perspective on the past and present of global inequalities and the unequal international division of labour, as they inform key themes in modern history and interdisciplinary studies. She is also interested in developing research perspectives that simultaneously inquire into and integrate the study of class, gender, and other categories of difference and unequal social relations.

In focusing on women, and gender and labour policy, in different political and economic systems, Zimmermann aims to develop more inclusive and more reflective conceptualizations of labor and gender history. She has studied women’s activism within local, regional and international networks, including women's and labour organizations, and multilateral international organizations, in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Recent and ongoing reseach

In the ERC project ZARAH: Women’s labour activism in Eastern Europe and transnationally, from the age of empires to the late 20th century (ERC Advanced Grant, Grant agreement No. 833691; 2020-2026) Zimmermann has studied the politics women trade unionists in various historical contexts and women's labour activism accross class and political divide, demonstrating how women in their activism on behalf of working women made use of and tried to expand or alter the space of action so variably construed. In her studies on women trade unionists who aimed to combine progressive labour and gender policies often struggled with their ‘troubled’ position in highly masculinist organizational contexts. Being part of organizations that often privileged and contributed to the construction of a core working class, these women aimed to represent and promote the interests of marginalized and particularly exploited segments of the labor force. At the same time, trade unions often functioned as a means to control labor militancy and workers’ resistance.

Zimmermann's monograph (in German) entitled Women’s Politics and Men’s Trade Unionism. International Gender Politics, IFTU Women Trade Unionists and the Workers' and Women’s Movements of the Interwar Period (Löcker) was published in 2021. In 2022, she co-edited with E. Betti, L. Papastefanaki and M. Tolomelli, Women, Work, and Activism. Chapters of an Inclusive History of Labor in the Long Twentieth Century (CEU Press). The collectively written, multi-author monograph Women's Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond. A New Transnational history (UCL Press, 2025) is a major outcome of the ZARAH project.

Zimmermann now works on a book manuscript, co-authored with Dorothy Sue Cobble, on the transnational political biography of Toni (Tony) Sender, a left labour activist and intellectual, during the decades she spent in the United States and at the United Nations.

Fellowships and Awards

European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant “Women’s labour activism in Eastern Europe and transnationally, from the age of empires to the late 20th century (Acronym: ZARAH) 2020-2026
Fellowship at re:work, the International Research Center on Work and Human Life Cycle, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Academic Year 2016–2017
Hungarian Ministry for Culture: Pro Cultura Hungarica Memorial Award for non-Hungarian citizens for promoting and popularizing Hungarian culture abroad, and enriching the cultural relations between Hungary and other nations, 2005
Fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Academic Year 2002–2003
Käthe Leichter Award 2000 for the study “Die bessere Hälfte? Frauenbewegungen und Frauenbestrebungen im Ungarn der Habsburgermonarchie 1848 bis 1918,” Vienna-Budapest 1999

Professional Activities

Member, Editorial Board, Social and Economic History Annals (Roczniki Dziejów Społecznych i Gospodarczych), since 2024
Member, Advisory Board, Múltunk. Politikatörténeti Folyóirat [Our Past. Journal for Political History] (in Hungarian), since 2021
Chairperson, Academic Advisory Board, Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg, since 2020
Editor, book Series “Work and Labor: Transdisciplinary Studies for the 21st Century,” CEU Press, since 2018
Member, Scientific Advisory Board, Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte. Zeitschrift für historische Studien, since 2018
Member, Board of the International Federation for Research into Women’s History, ,2015-2025
Associate Editor for Europe (focus Eastern Europe), Labor: Studies in Working-Class History (USA), 2018-2024
Member, Editorial Board of International Advisers, Labour History (Australia), 2018-2024
President, International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH), 2014-2022
Editor, “The Habsburg Empire, 1820–1918,” primary sources and secondary works, published in the database “Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires since 1820,” eds. Kathryn Kish Sklar and Thomas Dublin, 2015–2018

Doctoral Supervision

Ongoing

Gulrano Ataeva (2024–) (co-supervision with Charles Shaw)
Marta Baradic (2020–)
Nayanjyoti Kalita (2023–)
Elisabeth Luif (2020–) (co-supervision with Constantin Iordachi)
Anita Prsa (2021–)
Jelena Tesija (2020–)

Dissertations defended

Selin Cagatay, The politics of gender and the making of Kemalist feminist activism in contemporary Turkey (1946-2011) (2016)
Roxana Cheschebec, Feminist ideologies and activism in Romania (approx. 1890s-1940s): nationalism and internationalism in Romanian projects for women’s emancipation (2005)
Beáta Hock, Gendered artistic positions and social voices: politics, cinema and the visual arts in state-socialist and post-socialist Hungary (2009)
Emily Gioielli, White misrule: terror and political violence during Hungary’s long World War I, 1919-1924 (2015)
Mátyás Erdélyi, Experts in the bureau: private clerks and capitalism in the Late Habsburg Monarchy (2020) (co-supervision with Karl Hall)
Alexandra Ghit, Loving designs: gendered social reform and regulation in Interwar Bucharest (1918-1939) (2020)
Orsolya Kerestely, Középfokú leánynevelés és nemzetépítés a dualizmus kori Magyarországon [Girls’ secondary education and nation-building in Hungary in the dualist period] (ELTE, 2007)
Hasmik Khalapyan, Woman’s question and women’s movement among Ottoman Armenians 1875-1914 (2008)
Emese Lafferton, A history of Hungarian psychiatry 1850-1908 (2003)
Anna Loutfi, Hungarian family law and the struggle for gender order: 1848-1913 (2006)
Mladen Medved, Transition to capitalism in Croatia, Hungary and Austria (1830s to 1867/8): a study in uneven and combined development (2020)
Nil Mutluer, Tactics in between: gendered citizenship and everyday life of internally displaced men in Tarlabasi, Istanbul (2012)
Rasa Navickaite, The pre-historic Goddess of post-socialism: transnational biography and reception of Marija Gimbutas (2020)
Vilana Pilinkaite-Sotirovic, Family structures and strategies in post-emancipation Lithuania (2002)
Raluca Maria Popa, Restructuring and envisioning Bucharest: the socialist project in the context of Romanian planning for a capital a fast-changing city and an inherited urban space 1852-1989 (2004)
Markian Prokopovych, Architecture cultural politics and national identity: Lemberg 1772-1918 entangling national histories (2004)
Hanna Szemző, The Hungarian pension system, 1948-1990: welfare and politics in a socialist country in its European context (2013) (co-supervision with Judit Bodnár)