Claudia Kraft is a Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna since 2018. Before coming to Vienna she had worked at the University of Siegen as a Professor of Contemporary European History (2011-2018) and at the University of Erfurt as a Professor of Central and Eastern European History (2005-2011). She specializes in 20th century comparative European and particularly Central and Eastern European History. She is the speaker of the Research Platform "Transformations and Eastern Europe" and Member of the Research Platform "Gender: Ambivalent In_Visibilities - GAIN" (https://gain.univie.ac.at/) and of the Research Group "History of Human Rights and Democracy" (https://menschenrechte-demokratie.univie.ac.at/).

Full CV

Research project:

Claudia Kraft co-directs (with Prof. Dr. Jerzy Kochanowski, Warsaw) a German-Polish research project (DFG/NCN) about “Rooms for Manoeuvre in State Socialism”, which investigates forms of historical agency in East Central Europe before and after 1989.

Research interests:

• European Contemporary History in Comparative Perspective
• History of Central and Eastern Europe since the 18th Century
• Gender History
• History of State Socialist Societies After World War II
• Transnational 20th Century Legal History
• Theory of History and Concepts of Area Studies

Recent publications:

• Claudia Kraft/Ulf Brunnbauer (2020), Statehood in Socialism, in: Włodzimierz Borodziej, Sabina Ferhadbegović, Joachim v. Puttkamer (eds.): The Routledge History Handbook of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Volume 2: Statehood, London/New York, pp. 215-289.
• Claudia Kraft (2020), Nationalkommunismus: Mieczysław Moczars “Farben des Kampfes” (Barwy Walki), in: Borodziej, Włodzimierz/Buko, Maria/Utz, Raphael/Zakrzewska, Zofia (eds.): Vom Tod des Vaters der Völker bis zum Ende des Adlers der Karpathen. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von Jerzy Kochanowski, Warszawa, pp. 171-179.
• Claudia Kraft, Béatrice von Hirschhausen, Hannes Grandits, Dietmar Müller and Thomas Serrier (2019), Phantom Borders in Eastern Europe: a new concept for regional research, in: Slavic Review 78/2, pp. 368-389.
• Claudia Kraft, Jerzy Kochanowski (eds.) (2018), Wolne przestrzenie: marginesy swobody w realnym socjalizmie / Room for Manoeuvre in State Socialism. [Special Issue of Przegląd Historyczny 109/4].
• Claudia Kraft (2018), Spaces of Knowledge and Gender Regimes: From Double Marginalization to a Gendered History of Knowledge in Central and Eastern Europe, in: Acta Poloniae Historica 117 (2018) (= Gender and Science in Eastern Europe), pp. 7-25.

Complete list of publications