Professional Pathway

2019 - 2022 EU partner project in Creative Europe Culture: "Glass Works. Training | Networking | Taking Roots", in cooperation with Bild-Werk Frauenau, D, and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, DK

Since 11/2017 Head of the Department of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Graz

2017 Habilitation at the University of Regensburg with the habilitation thesis "Absurd Anxiety. Narratives of the Security Society" (venia docendi: Comparative Cultural Studies)

Since 2012 University Professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Graz, Deputy Head of the Institute

2009-2012 Research project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the Chair of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Regensburg: "‘Safe’ in the Everyday. German-English case studies on the relationship between everyday communication and experience, and contemporary security discourses"

2008 - 2009 Visiting Research Fellow - Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of the West of England, Bristol / GB - Department of Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies / European Ethnological Research Unit

2008 Visiting Professor at the Department of European Ethnology at the University of Vienna on "Materiality of Culture and Memory"

2007 Research assistant at the Chair of Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Regensburg, coordinator of the Elite Graduate Programme of Eastern European Studies

1999 - 2005 Scientific conception and realisation of the new Frauenau Glass Museum as an ethnographic museum for European cultures of representation, work and memory in the medium of glass (with Dr Jörg Haller), EU-funded project

1998 - 2009 Freelance cultural work (cultural and project management, exhibitions, conference organisation, adult education, documentary film)

1998 - 1999 Field research study and film concept commissioned by the Department for Saxon History and Folklore, Dresden: "The Trace of '45. The End of the War in the Saxon Memory Space"

1994 - 1996 Research assistant on the research project of the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the Ludwig Uhland Department of Empirical Cultural Studies, Tübingen, under the direction of Prof. Dr Utz Jeggle: "Archaeology of a No Man's Land. Ethnographic studies among the Germans in Bohemia" (research, project realisation, final report)

1993 - 2011 Lecturer (teaching assignments etc.) at the Universities of Tübingen, Jena, Regensburg, Passau, Vienna, Graz, University of the West of England - Bristol

1993 - 1994 Research assistant at the Ludwig Uhland Department of Empirical Cultural Studies at the University of Tübingen

Since 1988 cultural and educational work for Bild-Werk Frauenau (International Summer Academy for Glass Design and Fine Arts, cross-border cultural programmes), chairwoman from 1990 to 2008 and since 2017

Since 1987 ethnographic field research along the German-Czech border and in other everyday cultural contexts, since 2006 focus on security and governmentality.