Dr. Katja Praznik

Katja Praznik holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Ljubljana. She teaches courses related to the political economy of the arts, cultural policy, and research in the field of arts management. She is the author of The Paradox of Unpaid Artistic Labor: Autonomy of Art, the Avant-Garde and Cultural Policy in the Transition to Post-Socialism (Ljubljana: Sophia, 2016). Her research focuses on labor issues in the arts during the demise of the welfare-state regimes, and has been published in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Historical Materialism, Journal for the Critique of Science, and KPY Cultural Policy Yearbook as well as in edited volumes, among them in NSK From Kapital to Capital (MIT Press 2015), and Crisis and New Beginnings: Art in Slovenia 2005–2015 (Moderna galerija 2015). Before moving to the United States, she worked as a freelancer in the Slovenian independent art scene. She was the editor-in-chief of journal Maska and was engaged in the struggles for improving working conditions of art workers at Društvo Asociacija. Her latest book manuscript Invisible Art Workers: The Paradox of Unpaid Artistic Labor After Socialism dealing with Yugoslav socialism, art and labor is under contract with the University of Toronto Press.

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 716.645.0769