Serena Bazemore, Duke University
Serena Bazemore (BA English, University of California, Berkeley; MA, History, North Carolina State University) is a historian of religion, Program Director at Duke University’s Center for Jewish Studies, and coordinator of the Center for Late Ancient Studies, as well as of the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina (JHFNC). Her research interests focus on comparative religion and interreligious exchange, and she is currently studying late medieval haggadot and psalters. She has completed an MA thesis, The Twelfth Century Renaissance and the Religion of Intent: Interiority and the Emergence of Selfhood across Religious Boundaries under Professor Julie Mell at NCSU.
Malachi Hacohen, Duke University
Malachi Haim Hacohen (Ph.D., Columbia) is Bass Fellow, Associate Professor of History, Political Science and Religion, and Director of the Center for European Studies at Duke University. His Karl Popper – The Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna (Cambridge, 2000) has won the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the AHA and the Victor Adler State Prize. He has published essays on the Central European Jewish intelligentsia, Cold War liberalism, and cosmopolitanism and Jewish identity in The Journal of Modern History, The Journal of the History of Ideas, History and Theory, History of Political Economy, Jewish Social Studies, and other journals and collections. He is completing Jacob & Esau Between Nation and Empire: A Jewish European History for Cambridge.
Dieter Hecht is a historian and works at the Center for Jewish Studies at the Karl-Franzens-University Graz and at the Institute of Cultural Studies and the History of Theater (IKT) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He received his BA and MA in History and Classical Archaeology, and his PhD from the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna in 2003. Hecht specializes in Jewish history of the 19th and 20th century, Jewish women’s history and Jewish press, and provenance research.
His publications include two monographs, an edited volume, and various articles: Der Weg des Zionisten Egon Michael Zweig. Olmütz-Wien-Jerusalem, German/Hebrew, Baram 2012; Zwischen Feminismus und Zionismus. Anitta Müller-Cohen (1890-1962). Die Biographie einer Wiener Jüdin, in: L’Homme Schriften Vol. 15, Wien 2008, 364 p.; Die Jüdischnationale Partei in Österreich 1906-1938, in: Chilufim. Zeitschrift für jüdische Kulturgeschichte (7/2009), ed. together with the Zentrum für jüdische Kulturgeschichte, Universität Salzburg, 278 p.; Bosnische Impressionen – k.k. Soldaten als Tourismuspioniere vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg, in: Peter Stachel/Martina Thomson (eds), Tourismus in der Habsburgermonarchie, Bielefeld (in print 2014), pp. 201-216.; Feldrabbiner in der k.k. Armee während des Ersten Weltkriegs, in: Marcus Patka (ed.), Weltuntergang. Jüdisches Leben und Sterben im Ersten Weltkrieg, Jüdisches Museum Wien, Wien 2014, pp. 67-73.; Simon Szantó (1818-1882) und die Neuzeit (1861-1903): Eine jüdische Wochenschrift wehrt sich, in: Michael Nagel/Moshe Zimmermann (eds), Judenfeindschaft und Antisemitismus in der deutschen Presse über fünf Jahrhunderte, Vol. 1, Bremen 2013, pp. 223-240.; At the crossroads between different worlds. Martha Hofmann (1895-1975) a Zionist pioneer from Austria”, in: Marina Calloni/Maura Hametz/Andreá Petö/Judith Szapor (eds), Jewish intellectual women in central Europe 1860-2000: Twelve Biographical Essays, New York 2012, pp. 261-292.; The Jewish World Relief Conference in Carlsbad, 1920 and 1924. A Struggle for European Jewish Self Determination, in: Judaica Bohemiae XLV-1, Jewish Museum Prague, Prague 2010, pp. 51-69.
Louise Hecht, Palacký University, Olomouc
Dr. Louise Hecht is a senior lecturer in Jewish History and Israel Studies at the Kurt-and-Ursula-Schubert Center for Jewish Studies at Palacký University, Olomouc, CZ since 2007. She received her PhD in 2002 at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and won the 2003 Pridan Prize for the best dissertation in Jewish history at the Hebrew University. From 2002-2004 she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Leonid Nevzlin Center for Russian and Eastern European Jewry, Hebrew University and later taught at the universities of Vienna and Klagenfurt/Austria. During 2010-11, she was a senior fellow at the IFK-International Research Center for Cultural Studies, Vienna; in 2013 she was a Fulbright visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research focuses are early modern and modern history of central Europe, Holocaust and Israel Studies.
Her publications include Ein jüdischer Aufklärer in Böhmen: Der Pädagoge und Reformer Peter Beer (1758-1838), Köln: Böhlau, 2008; (ed.) Jewish Enlightenment in the Czech Lands in a European Perspective, guest-edited issue of Jewish Culture and History 13, vols. 2-3 (2012); (ed.) Kulturagent, Poet und Philanthrop. Die vielen Gesichter des Ludwig August Frankl (1810-1894). Weimar: Böhlau (to be published 2015); (ed. together with Karolina Krasuska & Andrea Petö), Women and Holocaust, Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences (to be published 2015); “The Beginning of Modern Jewish Historiography: Prague – A Center on the Periphery” in Jewish History, Haifa 19 (2005), p. 347-373.
Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, Vienna
Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek has been a curator in Jewish museums in Europe and the U.S. since 1984, and, for eighteen years (1993-2011), the chief curator of the Jewish Museum in Vienna. She works presently as university lecturer, freelance curator, researcher, and museum consultant, and collaborates with Michaela Feurstein-Prasser on exhibit.at. Her scholarly foci are Jewish art and museology. She studied in Vienna and Tel Aviv, and received her PhD in from the University of Vienna with a dissertation in Jewish cultural history.
Deborah Holmes, University of Kent
Deborah Holmes is Senior Lecturer in German at the University of Kent. She studied Modern Languages at Oxford (New College), Pavia and Salzburg, and held postdoctoral fellowships at Oxford (The Queen’s College), the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow) and the IFK in Vienna. She was College and University Lecturer in German at New College, Oxford 2003-2004, and researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for the History and Theory of Biography in Vienna 2005-2010, working primarily on a biography of the philanthropist, pedagogue and journalist Eugenie Schwarzwald. Her research focuses on late nineteenth and early twentieth century Austrian literature and culture. She has also worked on German and Italian antifascist exile literature of the 1930s and 1940s. Other interests include Viennese Modernism, the cinema of Michael Haneke, the history of feuilleton journalism in German and literary translation. Deborah Holmes is co-editor of the MHRA journal Austrian Studies.
Helmut Konrad, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz
Helmut Konrad is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Graz and Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Cultural History, Linz-Graz. He has previously served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Rector of the University of Graz. He received his PhD from the University of Vienna with highest distinction, in 1973, and his habilitation at the University of Linz in 1980. He has been a Visiting Professor at Yale University and Cornell University (USA), the Univerity of Waterloo (Canada), and the European University Institute (Italy), and receivhed an honorary degree from the University of Shkodra (Albania) in 1996. He is a member of the Board of Austriaca, Paris, and of the Austrian History Yearbook, Minneapolis. He has published seven books, 41 edited volumes, and 250 articles. He has received various awards, including the Theodor Koerner Prize, the Victor Adler Prize, the Vienna Award 2002 for Humanities, and the Verkauf-Verlong Prize for antifascist literature in 2008.
Helmut Lethen, IFK, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften
Helmut Lethen is Director of the IFK, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna. He is professor emeritus for modern German literature at the University of Rostock. He taught previously at the University of Utrecht and the Free University of Berlin and has held visiting appointments at Chicago, Klagenfurt, Indiana University and UCLA. Among his publications: Der Schatten des Fotografen. Bilder und ihre Wirklichkeit (2014); Suche nach dem Handorakel. Ein Bericht (2012); Unheimliche Nachbarschaften: Essays zum Kälte-Kult und der Schlaflosigkeit der Philosophischen Anthropologie im 20. Jahrhundert (2009); Der Sound der Väter. Gottfried Benn und seine Zeit, Berlin (2006); Cool Conduct. The Culture of Distance in Weimar Germany (2002); Verhaltenslehren der Kälte. Lebensversuche zwischen den Kriegen (1994); Neue Sachlichkeit 1924-1932. Studien zur Literatur des “Weißen Sozialismus” (1970).
Jill Lewis, Swansea University
Jill Lewis is recently retired from her post as Reader in History in the Department of History and Classics at Swansea University, Wales. Her special area of research is twentieth century Austrian history, in particular the political and social history of the First and Second Republics and the influence of socialism and fascism on Austrian political culture. She has published numerous books and articles, including Workers and Politics in Occupied Austria (Manchester University Press, 2007), which was nominated for the Victor Adler Prize in 2010, and Fascism and the Working Class in Austria, 1918-1938 (Berg, 1991). She collaborated with Paul Berg and Oliver Rathkolb in editing the English translation of the memoirs of Bruno Kreisky, The Struggle for a Democratic Austria: Bruno Kreisky on Peace and Justice (Berghahn, 2000).
Wolfgang Maderthaner, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv
Wolfgang Maderthaner, General Director of the Austrian State Archives, was previously the Head of the Association for the History of the Working-Class Movement (Verein für Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung) for many years. His research and publications, which have appeared in many languages, focus on Austrian working-class and social history, modern European cultural history, Urban Studies and Cultural Studies, history of political economy and historical methodology. Some of his publications include: Unruly Masses. The Other Face of Fin de Siècle Vienna (with Lutz Musner, 2008); L’autoliquidation de la raison. Les sciences de la culture et la crise du social (2010); Neoliberalismus und die Krise des Sozialen (with Andrea Grisold 2010); “Untergang einer Welt. Der Große Krieg 1914-1918” in Photographien und Texten (2013) and Der Wiener Kongress. Die Erfindung Europas (editor, 2014).
Siegfried Mattl, Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Geschichte und Gesellschaft
Siegfried Mattl, Univ.-Doz. Dr. (1954–2015), was Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society. He taught in the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna as well as at other Universities (including Vienna, Linz, Budapest, and Sao Paulo). His research focused on urban, cultural, and media history. Siegfried Mattl curated numerous exhibitions and was at the head of several research projects. He was a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Wien Museum since 2008 and of the Museum für Volkskunde, Wien since 2013. He served as an editorial team member of “Zeitgeschichte” since 1986 and of “International Review of Social History” since 1997 and edited many peer-reviewed journals and books.
Gerhard Milchram, Wien Museum
Gerhard Milchram is historian and curator at the Wien Museum, where he has recently oversaw, with Susanne Breuss, “Vienna in the First World War. City Life in Photography and Graphic Arts.” Until 2010, he was for many years the curator of the Vienna Jewish Museum, where he oversaw numerous exhibitions, among them, “Ceija Stojka – live” (2004); “Tennenbaum is Now Angry ” (2005), with Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek; “Ordnung muss sein. The Archive of the Jewish Community of Vienna,” with Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek and Ingo Zechner (2007); “Did you see my Alps? A Jewish Love Story,” with Hanno Loewy (2009); “The Turks in Vienna: History of a Jewish Community,” with Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek and Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz (2010); and, with Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, the new permanent exhibition at the Museum Judenplatz (2010).
Thomas Prendergast, Duke University
Thomas Prendergast is a PhD student in Modern European History and Perilman Fellow in Judaic Studies at Duke University. His work is focused on the idea of empire in East Central Europe and its relationship to cosmopolitan political projects, particularly the role this region’s multi-lingual and multi-confessional identity played in the formation and articulation of alternative, supranational visions of political modernity. Currently, he is exploring the impact of Jewish scholars on the development of ethnography and sociology in Austria.
Béla Rásky, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute
Béla Rásky is the Administrative Director of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) historian. Until 2003, he was Director of the Austrian Science and Research Liaison Office in Budapest. A historian whose work focuses on the First Republic of Austria and the memory of the Habsburg Monarchy in Austria and Hungary, he has contributed to numerous projects and exhibitions, including the organisation of the literary estates of Felix Hurdes, Emmerich Czermak, Vinzenz Schumy and Christian Broda. He was co-organiser of the exhibitions “Die Kälte des Februar,” “3 Tage im Mai,” “Flucht nach Wien,” and “Wien um 1930,” and has contributed for many years to the Österreichische Kulturdokumentation. Internationales Archiv für Kulturanalysen. Among his numerous translations from Hungarian are István Bibó’s “Zur Judenfrage” and Jenö Szücs’ “Die drei historischen Regionen Europas.”
Werner Michael Schwarz, Wien Museum
Werner Michael Schwarz is a historian and lecturer at the universities of Vienna and Klagenfurt, and a curator at the Wien Museum. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Vienna. His main research interests include urban studies, media studies, and film studies. He has recently edited, with Susanne Winkler, the the Exhibition Catalogue of Romane Thana. Orte der Roma und Sinti (2015) and, with Wolfgang Kos, Mythos Galizien (2015).
Joshua Shanes, College of Charleston
Joshua Shanes is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at the College of Charleston. An expert on Habsburg Jewry, he has published widely on Jewish cultural and political history, particularly Jewish nationalism and Orthodoxy in 19th and 20th-century Eastern Europe. His first book, Diaspora Nationalism and Jewish Identity in Habsburg Galicia (Cambridge, 2012), traced the nationalization of Galician Jewry in the last decades before the First World War.
Lisa Silverman, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
Lisa Silverman is Associate Professor of Historyand Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is author of Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars (Oxford UP, 2012), co-author with Daniel H. Magilow of Holocaust Representations in History: an Introduction (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2015), as well as co-editor with Arijit Sen of Making Place: Space and Embodiment in the City (Indiana UP, 2014) and co-editor with Deborah Holmes of Interwar Vienna: Culture between Tradition and Modernity (Camden House, 2009). A specialist in modern European Jewish history, her interests include German and Austrian Jewish culture, visual culture, and gender.
Georg Spitaler, Verein für Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung (VGA)
Georg Spitaler is Researcher at the Association for the History of the Labor Movement (VGA) in Vienna. He studied political science and history at the University of Vienna and was a junior fellow at the IFK (2002-3) and Duke University (2004). He held a post-doctoral position at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Vienna and served as a Lecturer at the University of Applied Arts. He is recipient of the Victor Adler State Prize for younger scholars for his book Authentischer Sport – inszenierte Politik? He has published widely in cultural studies and football history and is a national research partner of the FWF project “Jewish sports officials in Vienna between the wars,” and is interested especially fictional political narratives as part of the politico-culture studies of sports.
Martina Steer, University of Vienna
Martina Steer
Martina Steer has studied history and economics in Berlin, Rotterdam and Munich and has earned her PhD at the University of Vienna. She has been a research fellow at the Simon Dubnow Institute in Leipzig, the University of Wrocław, the German Historical Institute in Washington, the European University Institute in Florence, and the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. She now teaches as assistant professor at the University of Vienna. Her work includes the broader fields of European history, collective remembrance, Jewish and intellectual history, gender studies and the theory of history with a focus on cultural transfers and comparative history. She is currently working on a project about the transnational memory of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.
Amy Vargas-Tonsi, Duke University
Amy Vargas-Tonsi is the Associate Director of the Council for European Studies and the Council for North American Studies at Duke University. In addition to managing both councils, she oversees the CES Society of Scholars, and administers the Duke-UNC Jewish Studies Seminar and the Triangle Intellectual History Seminar. Ms. Vargas-Tonsi is also the Program Manager for the Concilium on Southern Africa. In these capacities, Ms. Vargas-Tonsi provides academic, programmatic and administrative support. She is trilingual (English, Spanish and French) and holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Organizational Communication from Ohio University; Ms. Vargas-Tonsi is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in International Studies from North Carolina State University. Her research interests include minorities in Central and Eastern Europe, and international education.
Ingo Zechner, IFK, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften
Ingo Zechner, historian and philosopher, is Associate Director of the IFK, Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in Vienna and Project Manager of Ephemeral Films: National Socialism in Austria. He served previously as Business Manager of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI), and Head of the IKG (Jewish Community’s) Holocaust Victims’ Information and Support Center. He was the Raab Foundation Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC in 2013. He has published on philosophical aesthetics (Bild und Ereignis, 1999), post-structuralist philosophy (Deleuze. Der Gesang des Werdens, 2003), film literature, music, archival theory and practice (Ordnung muss sein. Das Archiv der Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien, 2007), and Holocaust Studies.
