Ana Šela, PhD

Ana Šela is a historian and Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor. Her research focuses on the political, social, and cultural history of socialist Yugoslavia, with particular attention to state security services, surveillance practices, dissent, and the relationship between political power and private life. She completed her PhD in Contemporary History at the University of Maribor. Her doctoral research examined the activities of the Yugoslav State Security Service (Služba državne varnosti, SDV) in Slovenia during the 1980s, a decade marked by political crisis, social change, and growing criticism of the socialist system. Her academic work combines archival research with an interest in the less visible dimensions of political history: everyday life, personal relationships, gender roles, and the ways in which state institutions entered intimate spaces. She is particularly interested in the methodological and ethical challenges involved in studying sensitive archival records, including surveillance files and documents containing personal data.

The project Love through Espionage develops these interests further by exploring how mixed marriages between Yugoslav citizens and foreign nationals became objects of state-security attention during the Cold War. Focusing especially on women from Eastern European countries who settled in Yugoslavia through marriage, the project examines how political suspicion, gendered stereotypes, and intelligence practices intersected with family life and intimate relationships.

Through this research, Ana Šela aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Cold War surveillance—one that extends beyond political institutions and prominent dissidents to the everyday lives of individuals whose personal choices could attract the attention of the state.