معرفی
Elisabeth (Li) Gerhalter is a senior scholar and lecturer at the University of Vienna’s Department of History, where she has curated the Sammlung Frauennachlässe (Women’s Personal Papers Collection) since 2000 and directs it academically. Since 2006 she also manages the research blog Salon 21. Her work spans women’s and gender history, ego-document research, diary studies, and the politics of archiving.
Education:
- Dr. phil. in History, University of Vienna 2017 (summa cum laude)
- Mag. phil. in History, Sociology & Gender Studies, University of Vienna 2004
- Doctoral and international summer schools in Paris and Drosendorf
Research & Teaching:
Her research focuses on 19th- & 20th-century women’s and gender history, autobiographical writing, diary cultures, and feminist archival practices. She currently teaches courses on women’s/gender history, ego-document analysis and archival excursions at both the Institute of History and the Institute of European Ethnology, University of Vienna.
Publications & Trends:
Recent articles (2024-25) interrogate intersectional gaps in legacy collections, map women’s archive holdings across Central Europe, and integrate citizen-science collection trips. Earlier work analysed adolescent wartime diaries, material memory cultures in girls’ schools, and the 1919 suffrage moment as recorded by Viennese women.
Awards & Memberships:
- Käthe Leichter Prize 2022 for outstanding achievements in women’s and gender studies
- Founding member, European Ego-Documents Archives & Collections Network (EDAC)
- Chair, frida – Austrian association of women’s information & documentation centres
Grants & Projects:
She has led or co-led projects on feminist archival policies, public history approaches to diary collections, and edition projects such as the illustrated diary of Rudolfine Gandlmayr (forthcoming 2025). Since 2021 she is principal investigator of the FWF-funded project “(Un-)Systematic Knowledge. Ordering and Finding in Women’s and Gender History Archives” at the University of Vienna.
Labs & Teams:
She heads the Sammlung Frauennachlässe team (currently Sophie Hopfner) and is active in several university and trans-European collection networks, including “Die Sammlungen an der Universität Wien” and the interdisciplinary Research Focus on Women’s and Gender History.
