Projects
Current and proposed projects
2017-2019
Bio to the power of 3 (Bio3): Traditional knowledge, organic agriculture and avant-garde lifestyles This research project examines the core functional characteristics of traditional rural agriculture and the practical knowledge involved. The aim is to develop a practical basis for future means of rural production (e.g. Community Supported Agriculture, the revival of regional products and methods of production). The project draws on accurate historical reconstructions of specific organic farming operations in Styria, thus helping to develop the criteria for a favourable regional balance between profit-oriented and non-market trade. By non-market trade, we mean practices and lifestyles oriented towards the common good on a traditional microeconomic scale. Bio3 points to the three dimensions involved in the embedding of all food production processes, as outlined by the economic historian Karl Polanyi. The project therefore examines the indisputable connection between (1) regionally applicable, embodied empirical knowledge and (2) ecologically and socially responsible administration as a precondition for (3) a sustainable lifestyle. There is a further focus on the generation of practices and the transmission of embodied knowledge. This is so as to establish new networks and methods capable of appropriating knowledge of agriculture and, in turn, facilitate the entry of – above all young – people into regional agriculture.
Funding body: The Province of Styria
Contacts: Dr. Gabriele Sorgo, gabriele.sorgo(at)uni-graz.at DI Andrea Heistinger, andrea(at)heistinger.at Prof. extraordinarius Dr. Helmut Eberhart helmut.eberhart(at)uni-graz.at Dr. Elisabeth Kosnik elisabeth.kosnik(at)uni-graz.at
2015-2018
Contentious images – unruly practices: An ethnography of visual protest repertoires in south-eastern Europe. Supported by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Contacts: Johanna Rolshoven, David Brown, Angelos Evangelinidis, Marija Martinovic.
2015-2016
Uncannily familiar: Folkloric and artistic explorations of the folk costume in the Styrian Folk Life Museum
This project is based on the study project “The Styrian Gaze: Aesthetic Performance and Volkskunde” in the summer semester of 2015 and winter semester of 2015/16 at the Institute for Volksunde and Cultural Anthropology at Uni Graz. The research group consisted of students of Comparative European Ethnology and Art History and two tutors of Volkskunde/Cultural Anthropology as well as Art/Museum Design. The group analysed the historical “Folk Costume Room” at the Folk Life Museum Graz/Joanneum as a polyvalent spatial installation situated between applied science and art. The point of departure was the ambivalent tension that emerges on the one hand from the folkloric approach to presenting Styrian folk costumes (as “familiar”) and, on the other, from the impression transmitted by the sculptural figurines (the “uncanny”). This opened up new perspectives on the interrelation between Volkskunde and art as well as on questions of the social and cultural search for identity.
The project's research outcomes and conclusions were communicated to regional and supraregional publics, as well as to discipline-specific and professional experts. This ensued in book form, at various specialist fora (e.g. conference lectures) as well as in the form of an intervention/exhibition and participative actions.
Funding body: The Province of Styria
Contacts: Katharina Eisch-Angus
2010-2012
Mobility among trainees in Styria
MSC - Mobile Culture Studies [mobileculturestudies.com] Mobile Culture Studies, the association founded in 2006 in Switzerland, operates a web platform that is under construction. The platform perceives itself as an international and transdisciplinary forum for online publications dealing with mobility research in the cultural sciences. Download_pdf
Contacts: Johanna Rolshoven, Angelika Lorenz, Mail: mcs(at)mobileculturestudies.com
IACSA - International Association for Cultural Studies in Architecture [iacsa.eu] IACSA is an international association headquartered in Switzerland that published a newsletter three to four times per year. Its stated aim is to provide a link between cultural science and architecture.
Contacts: Justin Winkler, Johanna Rolshoven Mail: iacsa[at]iacsa.eu
OPLA - Online Platform for the History of Science Online encyclopaedia about prominent figures in the history of European Ethnology, currently under construction. The project provides an introduction, rooted in cultural analysis, to the life and work of both female and male polymaths in historical and cultural anthropology. Contacts: Johanna Rolshoven, Helmut Eberhart, Johann Verhovsek, Dunja Sporrer, Ulrike Grochot, Karin Estl; in cooperation with the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ZIM), Johannes Stigler
Network Volkskunde Prominent figures within the discipline and at its margins, with reference to the example of Styria (subproject – Online Platform for the History of Science). This project, supported by the Province of Styria, deals with persons active in early Styrian Volkskunde who previously received little attention in the literature on the discipline's history. Having completed portraits of these figures based on cultural analysis of their lives and works, these portraits are then published on a platform conveying the history of science, in this case that of Volkskunde.
Contacts: Johanna Rolshoven, Helmut Eberhart, Ulrike Grochot, Dunja Sporrer
Completed projects
"Die Albanische Volkszählung von 1918"/"The 1918 Albanian population census: Data entry and basic analyses"
Scholar responsible: Helmut Eberhart
"Pilgrims of Styrian parishes"
Scholar responsible: Helmut Eberhart
"Viktor Geramb Archive: Examining the Correspondence”
Scholar responsible: Helmut Eberhart
What makes life difficult: Suffering under contemporary and social conditions.”
Scholar responsible: Elisabeth Katschnig-Fasch
One only has to want to: Cultural science takes stock of social upheaval in the lifeworlds of youths.
Scholar responsible: Elisabeth Katschnig-Fasch, Gerlinde Malli, Diana Reiners, Gilles Reckinger
Everyday things: Function and symbolic meaning with reference to the Windischgarsten Spital at Pyhrn
Scholar responsible: Burkhard Pöttler
2009
JuMoLab. Mobility Among Trainees in Styria. In cooperation with the Styrian Chamber of Labour and the Austrian Federation of Trade Unions (ÖGB).
Download Projekt Outline
Contact: Johanna Rolshoven Cooperation: Klaus Breuss, Karin Leitner, Angelika Lorenz, Claudia Rückert, Johanna Stadlbauer, Patrick Wohlköniga
2010
Cultural anthropology meets architecture: Spaces, images of people and urban design. In cooperation with IACSA and the Forum for Cultural Anthropology and Architecture, Graz.