Project team
Christian Dewald – Researcher:
Dr. Christian Dewald, a film historian and educator, is a research associate (Senior Researcher) at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH) and was researcher in the project "Educational Film Practice in Austria".
In 1990, he co-founded the independent, non-institutional, project-funded research cooperative "das kino co-op", Vienna/Berlin, and since then serves as its managing director. Between 1995 and 2002, together with Elisabeth Büttner, implementation of two extensive research projects on Austria's history of film, society and mentality, commissioned by the Austrian Ministry of Science, the Arts Section of the Federal Chancellery, the Austrian National Bank and Film Archiv Austria.
From 2003 to 2013 scientific director of Film Archiv Austria with research focus on the labor movement, Red Vienna, exile, Viennese urban history, outreach, archive. 2009 Victor Adler Prize. Austrian State Prize for the History of Social Movements, together with Elisabeth Büttner.
From 2013 to 2017, he studied educational science at the University of Vienna with a focus on curative education, reform education and historical educational research. BA degree. Subsequently, specialized training at the Dachverband Österreichische Autistenhilfe to become a "specialist assistant for clients on the autism spectrum in the school setting". Since 2015 working with autistic students in various school levels and types (VS, NMS, AHS).
Iris Fraueneder – Cataloger:
Mag.a Iris Fraueneder, a film and media scholar, has worked in various projects at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH), where she is currently a cataloger for the project "Educational Film Practice in Austria".
She studied at the Department of Theater, Film and Media Studies (tfm) at the University of Vienna and graduated with a thesis on the transformation of militant cinema aesthetics in Masao Adachi and its reflection in Eric Baudelaire's essayistic documentary THE ANABASIS... (F 2011). At the tfm institute, she was also a staff member in the context of tutorials, work contracts, and as a lecturer.
She is currently working on the completion of her dissertation in cultural analysis at the University of Zurich. As part of her PhD, she is a member of the PhD laboratory "Epistemologies of Aesthetic Practices" (Collegium Helveticum), was a research associate in the SNF project "Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives in the Global South" (UZH) and an associate member of the RTG "Configurations of Film" (Goethe University). In her dissertation project she investigates cinematic, artistic and curatorial interventions in the absence of (film) images from Lebanon and Israel-Palestine, which are politically and historically withdrawn from sight, materially unavailable or inexistent. The focus is on practices that are not representational-positivist in orientation, but that also consider layers of the invisible as real and constitutive of reality.
Since 2015, she has also been active as a film curator in the association Diskollektiv.
Nico de Klerk – Researcher:
Nico de Klerk, PhD, served as a researcher in the project "Educational film practice in Austria". He is a film archivist, film historian and recently served as Senior Researcher at Utrecht University (project “Projecting Knowledge – The Magic Lantern as a Tool for Mediated Science Communication in the Netherlands, 1880-1940”). He lives in Amsterdam.
He has a BA in English Language & Literature (Leiden University), an MA in Discourse Analysis (University of Amsterdam), and a PhD from Utrecht University for the dissertation Showing and telling: film heritage institutes and their performance of public accountability. Between 1992 and 2012 he worked at the Nederlands Filmmuseum.
During his tenure as a collection researcher at the Filmmuseum he co-edited three volumes that came out of the international Amsterdam Workshops he curated: Nonfiction from the teens (1994); 'Disorderly order': colours in silent film (1995); and Uncharted territory: essays on early nonfiction film (1997). Subsequent Amsterdam Workshops were devoted to colonial and exotic imaging, the program as an exhibition format, and advertising film; the latter resulted in the book Films that sell (2016) that he co-edited with Patrick Vonderau and Bo Florin. Besides, he has published widely in international film historical journals and books; he is on the editorial board of the journals The Moving Image and Early Cinema in Review: Proceedings of Domitor. He also curated a number of other programs, in-house as well as for Il Cinema Ritrovato, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, FIAF, Österreichisches Filmmuseum, and the Orphans Symposium, among others.
At the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut für Geschichte und Gesellschaft (LBIGG), which was renamed into Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH) in March 2019, he was the project manager of "Exploring the interwar world: the travelogues of Colin Ross (1885-1945)" (2015–2017, FWF).
Vrääth Öhner – Key Researcher:
Dr. Vrääth Öhner, a film and media scholar, is Senior Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH). He was a key researcher in the project "Educational film practice in Austria".
From October 2019 to March 2020, he held a substitute professorship in Film Studies at the University of Bremen. In 2011-2017 he was a University Assistant (PostDoc) at the Institute for Theater, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna, and since 2018 he has been a Senior Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society (LBIGG), which was renamed Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH) in March 2019. He is a member of the international research network BTWH (Berkeley/Tübingen/Vienna/Harvard).
Research interests: Theory, aesthetics and history especially of documentary and amateur film, media and popular culture.
At LBIGG/LBIDH he was a research assistant in the research projects "Film.Stadt.Wien. A Transdisciplinary Exploration of Vienna as a Cinematic City" (2009-2011, WWTF), "Archaeology of Amateur Film. Excavations on the Visual Culture of Modernity" (2011-2013, FWF), "Red Vienna Sourcebook" (2017-2020, City of Vienna MA 7, chapter editor), "I-Media-Cities" (2016-2019, EU Horizon 2020, project collaborator 2018), and "Visual History of the Holocaust: Rethinking Curation in the Digital Age" (2019-2023, EU Horizon 2020, project collaborator 2019), which he continued to advise.
Katrin Pilz – Key Researcher:
Mag.a Katrin Pilz, a historian and cultural scientist, was key researcher in the project "Educational film practice in Austria". She is working in the framework of a Cotutelles (joint supervision Ph.D.) in the research team "Standardizing the Difference" at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in cooperation with the University of Vienna on a dissertation on early medical cinematography in Brussels and Vienna. She is a member of several international research networks, such as BTWH (Berkeley/Tübingen/Vienna/Harvard), History of Medicine in Belgium and the work group History of Medicine and Medical/Health Humanities of the Commission for History and Philosophy of Sciences of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna.
Ph.D. fellow at ULB, external lecturer at the Medical University of Vienna. Lectures, publications and research projects on the visual history of medicine and science as well as on urban history, body politics, gender history and educational film history. As part of the curatorial team of the Wien Museum exhibition "Das Rote Wien (2019-2020)" and the publication team "The Red Vienna Sourcebook" she has worked on topics of welfare, health and social policy.
Most recently, she worked in the interdisciplinary curation team of the exhibition "Threads of Life. Textiles in Medicine and the Arts", which was hosted by the Angewandte Interdisciplinary Lab at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She is currently working on editing a publication project on the history of medicine and medical health/humanities at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She has also recently received a research grant from the City of Vienna - Cultural Department (MA 7) and since 1 October has been researching a project entitled "Adolf 'Optikus' Nichtenhauser. A Viennese Exile History with International (Educational) Film, Medical and Archival Relevance".
Joachim Schätz – Project Lead:
Dr. Joachim Schätz is a university assistant at the tfm | Institute for Theater, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna and an associate researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH). He was head of the project "Educational Film Practice in Austria".
Joachim Schätz studied film and media studies in Vienna and Amsterdam. He was a film critic for the Viennese city newspaper Falter (2006-2013) and a researcher in the DOC-team project "Sponsored Films and the Culture of Modernization" (2010-2013, ÖAW). This was followed by positions at the University of Vienna as Senior Scientist at the tfm | Institute for Theatre, Film and Media Studies (where he also held regular teaching positions) and as administrative assistant of the interfaculty research platform "Mobile Cultures and Societies". From July 2017 to February 2019, he was Scientific Coordinator at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society (LBIGG), which was renamed the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH) in March 2019.
At LBIGG, Joachim Schätz was a research associate in the projects "Welterkundung zwischen den Kriegen: The Traveling Films of Colin Ross (1885-1945)" (2015-2017, FWF), "Red Vienna Sourcebook" (2017-2020, City of Vienna MA 7, chapter editor) and - as a member of the management team - accompanied the project "Visual History of the Holocaust: Rethinking Curation in the Digital Age" (2019-2023, EU Horizon 2020) from its conception in 2017-2018 to its launch phase in January and February 2019. He continued to serve as a consultant for this project. He is a member of the international research network BTWH (Berkeley/Tübingen/Vienna/Harvard).
His research as well as publication, lecture and teaching activities focus on mass culture and political theory, utility film, concepts of detail, and poetics & politics of comedy.
Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah – Researcher:
MMag.a Marie-Noëlle Yazdanpanah is a cultural scholar and historian who studied history, German studies and film/cultural studies in Vienna. She was a researcher in the project "Educational film practice in Austria".
Maria-Noëlle Yazdanpanah is a member of the international research network BTWH (Berkeley/Tübingen/Vienna/Harvard) and was BTWH/IFK Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley in 2006. Her research interests include visual history, urban history, consumer culture, and women's history, with a focus on Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s, and the educational film.
She has taught at the University of Vienna and at the Gymnasium Haizingergasse (history and media education). On behalf of the City of Vienna, she has developed scholarly research and outreach programs on women and homelessness and emancipatory housing (focusing on Einküchenhaus), as well as the short film Frauen.Wohnen.Wien. In 2019/20, she was part of the curatorial team of the exhibition "Red Vienna, 1919-1934" at the Wien Museum and responsible for the area of women and women's politics, including the outdoor locations Einküchenhaus and the single home of Ella Briggs.
At the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH) (until 2019 Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society/LBIGG) she was a research associate in the projects "Like Seen on the Screen. The Media and Our Lifeworld" (2010-2012, Sparkling Science) and "Metropolis in Transition. Vienna | Budapest 1916-1921" (2014-2016, Sparkling Science), linking research and outreach. She was involved in the "Red Vienna Sourcebook" (Stadt Wien MA 7, 2017-2020), a collaborative project between the BTWH Network, the Verein für Geschichte der ArbeiterInnenbewegung (VGA), and LBIDH, editing the chapters on consumption, women's politics, and education. She is currently researching "Visual Culture and Consumer Culture in the Viennese illustrated magazine 'Die Bühne'".