Birgit Johler

Hon. Prof. Dr. Birgit Johler is an Honorary Professor for European Ethnology at the University of Vienna. She holds expertise in museum studies, material culture, and commemoration practices. Her career includes roles as Senior Curator at Graz Folklore Museum (Universalmuseum Joanneum), curator at the House of Austrian History, and contributor to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum's Austrian exhibition. She teaches at multiple Austrian and German universities and has curated over 20 major exhibitions since 2000.

Education: M.A. in European Ethnology/Romance Studies (University of Vienna, 1998), Ph.D. in 2017 (thesis on Folklore Museums during political upheavals). Research focuses on 20th-century everyday history, Jewish-Austrian history, and museum historiography. Awards include a 2014 international competition win for redesigning Austria's Auschwitz exhibition.

Key exhibitions include 'Distance. Austria and Auschwitz' (2021), 'No Longer Buried: Jewish-Austrian History in Vienna' (2019), and 'Freud’s Dining Room' (2016). She has led FWF-funded research projects on museum history and Nazi-era provenance research. Active in academic governance as jury member for cultural memory projects and editorial work for the Austrian Journal of Folklore.