Short description:
Following de/constructivist approaches, the dissertation project focuses on the processuality, instability and performance of gender constructions. The project focuses on socialist military concepts of masculinity during the First World War and the First Republic of Austria until 1934, examining the discursively negotiated dimensions of meaning, figures, imaginations and delimitation foils of military and proletarian 'defensive' concepts of masculinity in the Austro-Hungarian army, the Volkswehr (People's Army), the Austrian army and the Austrian military. army, the Volkswehr, the Bundesheer and the Republikanischer Schutzbund. In addition, interactions with simultaneously existing soldierly, revolutionary, republican and proletarian identities are examined, and the subjectivation practices of social democratic and communist actors are brought into focus.

MOJ DOM. Refugees, migration and erased memories in the aftermath of Yugoslav wars

Term:	1.1.2023-31.12.2024
Employees:	CODICI COOPERATIVA SOCIALE ONLUS (Italy)
Funding body:	EU / European Remembrance CERV- 2022- Citizens-Rem

Short description:
In this project led by Codici Cooperativa Sociale Onlus (Italy), Heike Karge is investigating ideas of home among students with and without a biographical background in the former Yugoslavia. The surveys began in summer 2023 at the University of Regensburg and will continue from fall 2023 at the University of Graz.

Moj Dom, third-party funded projects ©Ivana Ognjenovac, Mare Šuljak

Landscape, third-party funded projects ©Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Prokudin-Gorskii Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-DIG-prok-02044]

Camera Caucasica. Networks of Photographic Practices in the Transimperial Caucasus

Term:	2021-2024
Staff members:	MMag. Dr. Dominik Gutmeyr-Schnur
Funding body:	FWF, Erwin Schrödinger Program at UCLA and University of Graz

Short description:
"Camera Caucasica" explores the networks that stand behind the production and circulation of photographs from the wider Caucasus region. It thereby connects theoretical considerations of imperial visions and discourses of difference, of knowledge production and circulation, of photographic theory and of entangled histories. It brings together a new imperial history of the long nineteenth century at the intersection of influence of three major empires, history of photography and technology, global and visual studies, and applies them from a transimperial perspective. The project has a strong impact on our understanding of how local photographic practices can be translated into a global context and it offers space for dialogue on entangled histories in a nationally contested area.

Demography and social structures in historical Southeast Europe

Term:	1.11.2021-31.10.2025
Staff members:	Daniel-Armin Đumić, Dr. Siegfried Gruber
Funding body:	FWF

Short description:
Questions about historical demography and social structures in South-Eastern Europe will be examined across countries and differences within countries (urban-rural, occupational groups) will also be identified. As a basis for this, the largest European database of historical census data outside the already established centers of historical-demographic research will be created.

Graphic ©Siegfried Gruber — Die Grafik zeigt das Zusammenleben von Frauen in Albanien im Jahr 1918 mit verschiedenen Verwandten nach dem Alter nach der Häufigkeit (d.h. 0,5 entspricht 50 %).

To the project website

Hands holding goldsmith tools ©Katharina Oke

A history of "Making Things" in West Africa, 1920-1980

Term:	1.9.2022-28.2.2025
Staff members:	Mag.phi. Katharina Oke, PhD
Funding body/funding program	European Commission/H2020

Short description:
The project "A history of 'Making Things' in West Africa, 1920-1980: creating, meaning making, and experience" focuses on craft production and handicrafts in Accra and Lagos. It approaches productive processes with a focus on the creative process and the socio-cultural significance of "making things". The aim of the project is, firstly, to shed light on historical knowledge systems and experiences of "making things" during and after formal colonial rule. Secondly, to contribute to establishing entrepreneurial activities as part of the social, cultural and political historiography of Africa. Turning to entrepreneurial activity, the project simultaneously attempts to overcome a reductive focus on questions of capital accumulation: Questions of 'making things' allow a historical insight into the ways in which people have interacted with technology - an insight that does not prescribe a binary distinction between 'imported' and 'local' - and further allows a range of motivations for entrepreneurial activity to be glimpsed.

The project focuses on bakers and goldsmiths and thus also attempts to provide insight into different careers in the arts and crafts and gender history. The aim of the project is to challenge Eurocentric notions of innovation and technology, and to highlight individual and collective knowledge on how to deal with adverse economic conditions during and after colonial rule. In this way, it also aims to contribute to a more complex account of how West African societies are part of the growing literature on the global history of capitalism and the history of science and knowledge.

EU-European crisis (narratives): Perspectives of student teachers in Styria

Duration:	March 2023 - December 2024
Employees:	Mag.Dr. Britta Breser, Matthäus Berger, BEd.
Funding body:	Province of Styria, Styrian Chamber of Labor

Brief description:
In public perception, democracy is associated with expectations and hopes for a good life. However, EU-rope is in a multiple crisis. EU skepticism is particularly high in Austria compared to the rest of Europe.

Students who are currently studying to become teachers in Styria have come to know EU-rope from the perspective of a crisis mode. This is not just a state that can be analyzed in terms of its cause and reaction. Crises can also be interpreted as a challenging potential that produces different experiences and meanings that can be used for historical-political educational processes.

Due to the complete lack of empirical findings to date, the following questions arise, among others:

What ideas do future teachers associate with EU-ropa? How do they assess their own EU-ropean (democracy) education in view of the crisis nature of EU-rope?

Czechoslovak intelligence services in Austria

Term:	2020 - 2024
Staff members:	Prof. Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Dieter Bacher, Philipp Lesiak, Mmag. Sabine Nachbaur
Funding body:	FWF

Brief description:
Conducted at the Institute of History at the University of Graz, in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War.
In March 2020, the Austrian Science Fund FWF decided to fund an international three-year research project on "The activities of Czechoslovak intelligence services in Austria in the Central European context 1948-1960. Networks - Operations - Impact" (FWF P-33220 G) under the direction of Univ.-Prof. Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx. It is being carried out at the Institute of History at the University of Graz in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War.

Side street ©ABS — Photo of a side street of the Hoher Markt in Vienna with instructions for placing a "dead letter box" of the Czechoslovakian state security. Photo: ABS.

Further information on the project

For all those who want to know more

Further information on the project can be found on the website of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War

The police in Austria: ruptures and continuities 1938-1945

Running time:
Collaborators:	Prof. Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Dr. Kurt Bauer, Nadjeschda Stoffers, Richard Wallenstorfer, BA, and others
Funding body:	Federal Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Austria

Brief description:
Conducted at the Institute of History at the University of Graz, in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War
Project partners: Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial Site

Since the beginning of 2022, the University of Graz, in cooperation with the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance, the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War, has been conducting a research project on "The Police in Austria: Ruptures and Continuities 1938-1945". This project, which is funded by the Austrian Ministry of the Interior, aims to make an initial contribution to the scientific analysis of the history of the most important executive body of the Second Republic. Knowledge of the significance, function and developmental history of Nazi organizations with a police function, the abuse of police powers within the framework of a totalitarian unjust state and their specific connection to Austria - or Austrians - are of great importance here. The focus is also on the judicial punishment and processing of Nazi crimes in the post-war period.

Round table ©BMI — a. from left: Barbara GLÜCK, Gerald HESZTERA, Gregor HOLZINGER, Barbara STELZL-MARX, Gerhard BAUMGARTNER,

Taken away. Ukrainian refugees in Austria in the mirror of mobile things

Term:	2022 - 2025
Employees:	Prof. Dr. Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Mag. Irina Malikowa
Funding body:	TU Graz, University of Graz, Province of Styria

Short description:
"It was simply difficult to decide what to take with you when you don't know whether you will come back," says a Ukrainian woman who fled to the West after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The aim of the project is to use oral history interviews to document personal stories of Ukrainian refugees in Austria and present them to the public in the form of a richly illustrated publication. In each case, the focus is on an object that was taken from the home country and is intended to serve as a starting point for the autobiographical stories of the refugees. The experience of war, the stages of flight and finally life far from home can be illuminated in the mirror of the selected object. "Mitgenommen" stands for the "mobile thing", but also for the precarious situation of the people concerned, to which attention is to be drawn.

Realization: Institute of History of the University of Graz in cooperation with Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War

Olga in portrait with a baby blanket ©BIK / Malikowa — Taken away: Olga took her son's baby blanket with her when she fled Kharkiv. Photo: BIK / Malikova