Jessica Greenberg

Jessica Greenberg is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Her work is motivated by a long-standing interest in the everyday life of social movements, as well as the hopes and disappointments that have animated democratic political activism after the Cold War. Her first book, After theRevolution: Youth, Democracy, and the Politics of Disappointment in Serbia (Stanford 2014) chronicles the lives of student activists as they confront the possibilities and disappointments of democracy in the shadow of political transformation in Serbia. Her current research builds this interest in democratic practice, activism and power in the context of European integration. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research at the European Court for Human Rights, she examines how new definitions of European belonging and democratic practice are being defined through international human rights regimes.

Prior to coming to UIUC, Greenberg was an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and an assistant professor in Communication Studies at Northwestern University. She received her BA in Gender and Women’s Studies from Columbia University and her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. In 2017 she earned a Master of Studies in Law at the College of Law, University of Illinois as an LAS Study in a Second Discipline Fellow. 

Find out more about Jessica Greenberg on the homepage of the University of Illinois.

Learn more about her on her personal webpage.