Renata Salecl
Renata Salecl (born 1962) is a Slovenian philosopher, sociologist and legal theorist. She is a senior researcher at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, and a professor at Birkbeck College, University of London. She has taught at the London School of Economics and at Cardozo School of Law in New York, where she speaks about emotions and law. Since 2012 she has been a visiting professor at King’s College London.
Her books have been translated into fifteen languages, and in 2017 she was elected to the Slovenian Academy of Science and Arts. She is linked to the Ljubljana school of psychoanalysis, which combines Lacanian ideas with German philosophy and critical theory.
In the late 1980s Salecl became active in Slovenia’s liberal opposition to the ruling Communist party and ran for parliament in 1990, though she did not win. She was married to the philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and they have one son.
Education and early career: Salecl studied philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, writing about Michel Foucault’s theory of power. She began working at the Institute of Criminology in 1986 and earned a PhD in Sociology in 1991 from the University of Ljubljana.
Work and ideas: Her work brings together law, criminology and psychoanalysis. She has written about punishment and about how late capitalism’s focus on choice can increase anxiety and guilt in modern people, and how these ideas relate to law and crime. She is associated with the critical legal studies movement.
Other roles: Salecl has held fellowships and teaching posts at several universities, including in Berlin, Washington, and Duke. She also writes columns for newspapers such as Delo and La Vanguardia. One of her books is Angustia (Anguish), published in 2018.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 18:18 (CET).