Iskra Iveljić was born in 1959 in Frankfort/Main. She studied History and English at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. From 1987 to 1990 she worked at the Croatian State Archives and from 1990 to 1993 at the Institute of Contemporary History. In 1992 she defended her master’s thesis and in 1998 her doctoral thesis. In 1993 she received the “Konstantin Jireček” grant of the Institute of the History of East and Southeast Europe in Vienna. Since 1993 she has been working at the History Department of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, and since 2010 as a full professor of Croatian modern and contemporary history. She teaches various courses on Croatian 19th century history for undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students. She also held lectures for students of the Institute for the History of South-Eastern and Eastern Europe in Regensburg.
From 2008 to 2010 she was the head of the History Department, and from 2008 until 2011she was leadingthe graduate study of Modern and Contemporary history at the same Department. The research of I. Iveljić is focused on various aspects of modernization, on the cultural and everyday life history in the 19th century.
She has been a member of editorial boards of several Croatian historical journals: Časopis za suvremenu povijest (Journal of Contemporary History), Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest (Journal of the Institute of Croatian History), Otium. Časopis za povijest svakodnevice (Otium. Journal of Everyday-life History). I.Iveljić also edited archival material and was a co-editor of collection of texts of Croatian historians published by Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino (Institute of Contemporary History) in Ljubljana in 2012 (Iz hrvatske povijesti 20. stoljeća/Iz hrvaške zgodovine 20. stoletja – Croatian 20th Century History).I. Iveljić held paper presentations at 17 international conferences in Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy, Hungary, Romania and USA.
She participated in several international projects: Kroaten in Wien 1790-1918 (The Croats in Vienna 1790-1918), led by Dr. Neven Budak (University of Zagreb) and Dr. Harald Heppner (University of Graz); Geschichte Südosteuropas als europäische Geschichte (History of Southeastern Europe as European History) led by Dr. Holm Sundhaussen (The Free University of Berlin) and Dr. Wolfgang Höpken (University of Leipzig), Croatian-Slovenian project The Public Use of History in Slovenia and Croatia – History in Slovene and Croatian PublicOpinion (Dr. Damir Agičić, Zagreb/Dr. Marta Verginella, Ljubljana). She was also a keynote speaker at the Zukunftswerkstatt (led by H. Sundhaussen and Dr. Ulf Brunnbauer, University of Regensburg), held at the Goethe-Institut in Zagreb in 2008.
I. Iveljić took part in many Croatian scientific projects, currently in The Croatian Modern and Contemporary History: European Models and Croatian Identities (Dr. Božena Vranješ-Šoljan, University of Zagreb). Her task was to analyze the practical influences of Western and Central European models on the Croatian school system in the 19th century.