Dr. Katja Seidel

She holds advanced degrees in social anthropology (Magister from the University of Vienna and PhD from Maynooth University) as well as a diploma in photography and audio-visual media (Die Graphische/Vienna). Since 2008, she has worked as lecturer at Universities in Vienna, Maynooth and Bern, was head of the art+knowledge division at treat.agency and held visiting post-doc research positions at the Max Planck Institute in Halle/Germany and at the Austrian Study Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Katja was also head of the film selection committee for the EASA 2022 Conference in Belfast and co-chair with Fiona Murphy of the PACSA Network (Peace and Conflict Studies in Anthropology) at EASA from 2018 - 2022.

Her academic expertise is situated at the crossroads of violence and conflict studies, biographical research, memories, mental health, legal anthropology, human rights and justice, as well as visual anthropology and arts. She has done fieldwork on violence, resistance and transgenerational memories in Argentina and Spain; investigated postcolonialism, racism and landrights Nicaragua, and co-directed the applied Holocaust research project „A Letter to the Stars” in Vienna. Amongst her publications are “Social Repair and (Re)creation: Broken Relationships and a Path Forward for Austrian Holocaust Survivors” (in Martínez & Laviolette - Berghahn 2019), the edited volume “Bellicose Entanglements 1914. The Great War as a Global War” (with Lakitsch & Reitmair; Lit Verlag 2015), “Peacebuilding and the Local” (Social Anthropology 2017), “‘The impossible only takes a little longer’, or what may be learned from the Argentine experience of justice.” (Social Anthropology 2011), and ‘History on Trial. H.I.J.O.S., Memory and Reparation in the Court of Tucuman/Argentina’ (in Larkan & Murphy - Ashgate/Routledge 2018).