Eszter Varsa is a social historian with a Ph.D. in Comparative Gender Studies (Central European University, Budapest, 2011). Her major fields of research include the history of women’s labour activism, child protection, health/hygiene, reproductive politics and Roma in Eastern Europe in the long 20th century.
She was Marie Sklodowska-Curie Intra-European (IEF) Research Fellow at the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg (2014-2016) and Romani Rose Fellow at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University’s Department of History (2020).
She has won the FLAX Foundation's Emma Goldman Award 2023 for her work in the field of gender history, material inequality, and the history of Roma.
Currently, Eszter Varsa is a research affiliate in the ERC project ZARAH: Women's Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Transnationally, From the Age of Empires to the Late 20th Century (Project director: Susan Zimmermann) at Central European University, Vienna.
She is the author of Protected Children, Regulated Mothers: Gender and the "Gypsy Question" in State Care in Postwar Hungary, 1949–1956 (CEU Press, 2021). Her articles have appeared in International Review of Social History, Nationalities Papers, and The History of the Family, where she coedited a special issue (2021) on reproductive politics and sex education in Cold War Europe.