Profile

Fatima Festić is a Senior Researcher and Visiting Fellow at the Amsterdam School for Regional, Transnational and European Studies. Festić graduated in Comparative Literature and Philosophy and completed her PhD in Literary Theory (with the focus on postmodernist narrative, psychoanalysis, and feminism), after studying, researching and teaching at the Universities of Zagreb, Fribourg and Zürich, University of Southern California and University of California, Los Angeles. Her postdoctoral work at the University of Columbia, NYC and the University of Pretoria, South Africa, further combined gender studies, trauma, and witnessing with the studies in postcolonialism, conflicts and wars. She was a Visiting Professor at GVSU Michigan, Bilkent University Ankara, Zagreb University, among others. Festić is a Board and advisory member of various international scientific associations, cultural institutions and journals. Since 1994 through today, Festić has served on the Executive Committee of the International Association for Semiotic Studies, since 2009 as a Permanent Fellow of the International Communicology Institute (Washington, D.C.). 

Festić’s recent work has focused on post-conflict societies and transnational configurations, specifically assessed through the intertwining processes of cultural narrativity, performativity, and mediality. She probes the growing challenges of the postdiasporic situation with the tools of the transforming of memory resourcefulness and the nomadic affirmative-affective thought and art that bolster European integrative practices.

Current research projects (working on monographs)

1. Festić is developing a novel theory of postdiasporic sociocultural dispersion that refers to moving and knowledge-production, the transforming role of memory and its political materialization.

2. Finalizing the book-collection on inter-art translation and witnessing, with the focus on mediality and performativity, entitled Body, Mediality, Hi/Story.

Research grants, fellowships & honours since 1988

University of Oxford (Literary Theory) ; University of Zürich (Comparative Literature) ; University of Fribourg (Anglophone Literatures) ; University of California at Irvine (Humanities) ; University of Pretoria (Humanities), among others.

Current cooperation

International Communicology Institute, Washington, D.C., Fellow; International Association for Semiotic Studies, Executive Committee; American Semiotic Society; International Comparative Literature Association, Gender Studies Committee; American Comparative Literature Association; European Society for Comparative Literature ; Jura Soyfer Society, Wien, Advisory Board; INST, Wien: Research Institute for Austrian and International Literature and Cultural Studies.

Most recent and accepted forthcoming publications:

1. “War and Art: A Radical Irreconcilability?” In: 33^rd Soyfer Symposion: The Arts and War. Contribution to a Culture of Peace. Channel Jura Soyfer. Tail 4. November 21, 2024.
2. Forthcoming: Festić, Fatima: “On The Present Day Microcosms: Translating the Emotion of Escape.” In: Semiotics in The Lifeworld. Proceedings from the XV Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. E-book. Thessaloniki, 2025.
3. Forthcoming: Festić, Fatima: “Dante Alighieri’s Journeys to Anna Akhmatova’s Realms.” In: Exploring Intersections between Nizami and Dante. Eds: Rahilya Gheybullayeva, Nuncio Ruggiero, Maria Theresa Giaveri. Brill, Leiden 2025.
4. Forthcoming: Festić, Fatima “Mediated Witnessing: New Streams in Witnessing Studies.” The American Comparative Literature Association State of the Discipline Report 2014-2024. Eds: Waïl Hassan and Shu-mei Shi. New York: Fordham University Press 2026.
5. Forthcoming: Festić, Fatima: “Postdiasporic Dispersion and Policymaking: Reinscribing the European Project Narratives from Within”. In: Handbook Decolonizing EUropean Studies. Eds: Rosalba Icaza, Beste İşleyen, Jan Orbie, Siddharth Tripathy. London, New York: Routledge 2026. 
6. Forthcoming: Festić, Fatima: “(Ir)Responsivenness to Suffering: Facing and Defacing ‘Legitimate’ Hurts.” In: Semioethics as Social Dialogic: (On and) Beyond Precarity, Insecurity & Crisis in the Twenty-first Century. Eds: Susan Petrilli, Sophia Melansson. London, New York: Routledge 2026.
7. Forthcoming: Festić Fatima: “Global Semioethics and Biosemiotics: A Conversation on Responsiveness and Responsibility”, Invited Article Category. In: Biosemiotics. Journal of the International Society of Biosemiotic Studies, 2026.
8. Forthcoming: Festić, Fatima: “Revaluing the Individual, Healing the Societal: New Concepts for Cross-Cultural Mediation of Pain and Healing.” In: Interlitteraria, Special Issue II: Trauma and Healing: Storying Lives, Literary Engagements, Entangled Memories. Ed. Leena Kaosaar. Tartu, Estonia.  2025/26.
9. Forthcoming: Festić, Fatima: Mimesis, Nomadic Thought, and Postdiasporic Dispersion. In: Special issue of Trópos on Mimetic Studies: New Theoretical Steps for the Mimetic Turn. Eds: Nidesh Lawtoo, Mathijs Peterson. 20026/7.