Vasko Simoniti
Vasko Simoniti (born 23 March 1951) is a Slovenian historian and politician. Between 2004 and 2008, he served as the Minister of Culture of Slovenia, being reappointed in 2020. He is an active member of the Slovenian Democratic Party. Early life and academic career Simoniti was born in Ljubljana as the son of the renowned composer and choir leader Rado Simoniti who had moved to the Slovenian capital from the Goriška region in the 1930s in order to escape the violent policies of Fascist Italianization in the Julian March. Vasko attended the Classical Lyceum of Ljubljana. He studied at the University of Ljubljana, graduating with a degree in history in 1977. After a short period of work in the public administration of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia, he started teaching at the Ljubljana University in 1981. In 1989 he obtained his PhD at the same university and started teaching history, specializing in Slovenian history from the 16th to the 18th century. As a historian, he dedicated himself mostly to the history of Slovene Lands in the early modern period, especially the relations of the Slovene Lands and the Ottoman Empire. He has also written on problems of methodology and epistemology