Marijana Grandits is co-founder of the Vienna Master and Senior Academic Advisor. Marijana is responsible for the student selection, the study trips as well as holding several specialised lectures throughout the program.

Marijana studied International Relations at the Johns Hopkins University and Slavistics at the University of Vienna and started her engagement for human rights very early on. Already as a student, she was fighting for minority rights and the right to development for the Global South, which led her to eventually become a member of the Austrian Parliament as well as member of a regional commission at the Ombudsman Board in Vienna.

As former director of the Working Table on Democratisation and Human Rights, Marijana was involved in the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe. She was one of the founders of the “Verona Forum”, an initiative for peace and reconciliation in the former Yougoslavia and is until now supporting a peace project in Srebrenica with the Alexander Langer Foundation. Marijana is a dedicated international human rights consultant and has an immense network of contacts, especially to Kosovo, where the students of our programme travel each year for a field trip. 

Besides her expertise in former Yougoslavia and the Balkans, Marijana has been involved in gender equality issues for decades. In 2010, she was senior co-ordinator of the AIDS2010 conference, which welcomed 30.000 participants from all over the world. In that same framework, Marijana organised the “Vienna Human Rights March” with international stars like Annie Lennox (Eurythmics).

For her restless engagements, Marijana was awarded the prestigious Bruno Kreisky Prize for Services to Human Rights in 2015. 

Marijana Grandits has also been involved in human rights through documentary film-making and is famously known for her work on the three-part documentary “the Jewish Margerite”. She truly brings in the experience of where human rights and cinematography intersect.