My research and publications deal with topics like
Areas of research
- Work and livelihood practices: crafts, trades, precarious earnings and illegal practices, job search, labour contracts and aspects of coercion, …
- Mobility and migration: journeymen’s tramping and travelling, vagrancy, itinerant trades, …
- Ego-documents and the life course: autobiographical narratives, letters, protocols and statements…
- Political struggles and state policy: trade legislation, labour, poverty, social rights and the right of residency…
- (State) bureaucracy and bureaucratic interactions: administrative procedures, police and court records, practices of identification and registration, …
The focus is on the area of Central Europe from the late 18th to the mid-20th century.
Approach and basic principles of my research
I am particularly interested in examining how social facts are produced in consensus and conflict. I study practices and interactions, considering various contexts and constellations and the perspectives of the parties involved. This necessarily includes those practices which seem powerless and ineffective at first glance. In my research, I use a broad variety of source material and I apply both qualitative and quantitative methods. Geometric Data Analysis (Multiple Correspondence Analysis) is an excellent tool which enables a systematic comparison of complex and diverse cases in their numerous aspects while it also supports relational thinking and a reflexive construction of one’s research subject.
Current research project
Currently I am working on co-production and uses of identity documents in the Habsburg monarchy and Austria from ca. 1850 to 1938.
A pilot study on employment record books for workers and servants (Arbeits- und Dienstbotenbücher) was funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.
At the moment my research is funded by the FWF (Austrian Science Fund)
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Activities and results
Affiliation
I am a senior researcher in the Department of Economic and Social History at the University of Vienna.
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Teaching
Since 2000 I have been teaching and supervising at the Universities of Vienna and Salzburg.
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News
In meinem neuen, vom FWF geförderten Projekt „Kategorisieren und Registrieren von Mobilität und Aufenthalt“ ist zum nächstmöglichen Zeitpunkt eine Stelle als wissenschaftliche*r Projektmitarbeiter*in (praedoc) zu besetzen. Stundenausmaß: 30h/Woche Einstufung…
I am very happy to announce that my new research project Categorizing, Registering and Reporting of Mobility and Stay was approved by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)! Picture: Registration book…
The volume Coercion and Wage Labour: exploring work relations through history and art, edited by Anamarija Batista, Viola Franziska Müller and Corinna Peres is now available to download from the…
