Denisa Nešťáková is a historian with a Ph.D. in General History (Comenius University, Bratislava, 2018). The focus of her research is on 20th-century East Central Europe, far-right movements, the Holocaust and gender studies in Slovakia.
Between 2019 and 2022, she held a post-doctoral position within the project “‘Family Planning’ in East Central Europe from the 19th Century until the Authorization of ‘the Pill’” at the Herder Institute. Her examination of the history of family planning resulted in her 2023 book Be Fruitful and Multiply. Slovakia’s Family Planning under three regimes (1918-1965), which received the 2024 Slovak Studies Association Book Prize.
She has published extensively on issues related to the history of the Holocaust and the history of women from the angle of their reproductive rights in Slovakia. Until 2025, she worked as a Research Associate at the Herder Institute where she concluded her post-doctoral project Privileged to be in Hell. Jewish Women in the Sereď Camp. The research was supported by a Saul Kagan Fellowship in Advanced Shoah Studies and a post-doctoral fellowship of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah.
She is the editor of various edited volumes, such as Challenging Norms: Family Planning as a Reflection of Social Change in 20th Century published in 2025. Her research has appeared among others in the Journal of Family History, Central Europe, Eastern European Holocaust Studies, and The Journal of Holocaust Research.