Fatima Festić is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam and affiliate of the Amsterdam Center for Migration Research. Festić graduated in Comparative Literature and Philosophy and completed her PhD in Literary Theory (postmodernist narrative, psychoanalysis, feminism), after studying, researching and teaching at the Universities of Zagreb, Fribourg, Zürich, Universities of Southern California and California, Los Angeles. From 1994 through today, she has served on the Executive Committee of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. 
Her postdoctoral work at the University of Columbia, NYC and University of Pretoria, South Africa further combined gender studies and literature with studies in postcolonialism, conflicts and wars.  She was a Visiting Professor at Bilkent University Ankara, Zagreb University, Baku Slavic University, among others. Festić is a Board member of various International scientific associations, cultural institutions and journals, and a Fellow of the International Communicology Institute (D.C.).

Festić’s recent interests focus on post-conflict societies and transnational configurations, assessed specifically 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 an affirmative-affective thought and art that all bolster European integrative practices.

Research expertise

• Critical cultural theory
• Literary theory
• Gender studies
• Political philosophy
• Nomadic philosophy
• Postconflict societies
• Migration
• Comparative (visual and performing) arts

Current research projects

• Festić is developing a theory of postdiasporic sociocultural dispersion, referring to moving and knowledge production and memory and its political materialization.
• Inter-art translation (with the focus on mediality and performativity).

Research grants & honours

Research Grants/Fellowships since 1988: 

• University of Oxford (English); 
• University of Zürich (Comparative Literature), 
• University of Fribourg (English); 
• University of California at Irvine (Humanities), 
• University of Pretoria (Humanities), among others.

Current cooperation

• International Communicology Institute, D.C., Fellow
• International Association for Semiotic Studies, Executive Committee
• International Comparative Literature Association, Gender Studies Committee
• Jura Soyfer Society, Wien, Advisory Board
• International Association for Comparative Literature
• American Comparative Literature Association
• European Comparative Literature Association