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Areas of research

My research and publications deal with topics like

  • 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 categorizing, registering and reporting of mobility and stay in the Habsburg monarchy and Austria from ca. 1850 to 1938.

This research project is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [10.55776/PAT9328724]

Dr. Sigrid Wadauer, Privatdoz.
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Activities and results

Affiliation

I am a senior scientist 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

Session on “Paperwork Histories”

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Beate Althammer and I organized a session for the ESSHC 2025 in Leiden. The session deals with “Paperwork Histories: Uses and Abuses of Identity Documents in Modern Europe”. It includes…

Now on board!

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On 20 January 2025, Sarah Sabina Zöchling joined my FWF-project "Categorizing, Registering and Reporting of Mobility and Stay" as a research assistant (Praedoc). Sarah Sabina Zöchling studied History, German and…

We are hiring!

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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…