Database of Funded Projects
The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies has generously funded academic research and public history projects that promote an understanding of the historic relationship between the United States and Austria. The following search tools make it possible to explore these projects and to learn more about the scholars and organizations who have received BIAAS grants and fellowships.
Cornelia Weiss [BIAAS-152412]
Gendered pay inequality continues today as a major issue in Austria (and the U.S., as well as the rest of the world). The immediate post-war period of the WWII era was a period in which the military governments had the power of law and force to eliminate or impose unequal pay against women and girls. “Answers to Unequal Pay: The U.S. Military Government in Post-WWII Austria” excavates what the U.S. military government in Austria did -- and did not do -- with their power (and the possible echoes in today’s gendered pay gaps).
Hannes Richter [BIAAS-152410]
The main purpose of the proposed project is to publish an English language, edited volume on the life, work, and the significance of photographer Yoichi Okamoto and the photographic record he created in Austria and in the United States. Using a visual frame of reference, the authors investigate the impact of Okamoto’s photography on our understanding of post-WWII Austria, its reconstruction and cultural life and connect it all the way to the pictorial record of the Johnson Administration and its many crucial moments in history through one unique lens.
James McSpadden [BIAAS-142307]
This project will explore behind-the-scenes political and personal connections among interwar Austrian politicians during Austria’s First Republic. From socialists to conservatives, Austrian politicians mingled with foreign guests and their political rivals at social gatherings in Vienna. In turn, these Austrians built up a network of political and social acquaintances that included a number of American senators, representatives, and high government officials. This archival research will not only further an understanding of private cross-party political connections in interwar Austria but also explore continuities from this surprisingly robust informal Viennese political culture into the lives of conservative and socialist Austrian émigrés to the United States during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Alison Clarke [BIAAS-142302]
Design Diplomacy: Austrian-American Dialogues explores the crucial Cold War role of design as a form of diplomacy through the prism of relations between Austrian and US industrial designers. While architectural historians have argued the significance of postwar Austrian architects and US-sponsored exhibitions in consolidating the new postwar social order, the significance of Austrian designers and their role in policy-making remains unexamined. Using original archival research, the project asserts the vital relevance of design dialogues between the US and Austria in framing aspects of design and development policy of the Cold War period.
Tomás Irish [BIAAS-132207]
This project explores the work of Walter Kotschnig (1901-1985), an Austrian student leader, humanitarian, and internationalist. Kotschnig was a crucial but relatively unknown figure in the creation of the United Nations and its institutions during the Second World War. This project will explore Kotschnig’s experiences as a student in early 1920s Austria, his involvement with international student welfare in the 1920s and 1930s to trace the development of his thinking and his networks, all of which were crucial to his work with the US State Department in the 1940s. The life of one man will be used to explore how Austria’s experience of post-First World War devastation informed American planning for the aftermath of the Second World War.
Niall Michael Buckley [BIAAS-132204]
This project concerns itself with the integral role that the United States of America, at both an institutional and societal level, played in the Habsburg story from 1916 to the 1945. A 2023 research trip is intended to forward my Transatlantic qualitative analysis of interwar, Second World War and early Cold War Habsburg Monarchist Reactionism as an international geo-political phenomenon. It will specifically examine republican and legitimist (pro-Habsburg) activism of Austrian exiles in the US from 1930-1955, perceptions of Central Europe, Austria and the Habsburg family within the US popular imagination and their impact on US foreign policy.
James Boyd [BIAAS-132203]
Selling Emigration examines how the commerce of migration influenced departures from Europe in the nineteenth century. It explores migration as a sellable commodity, interrogating the role of migration commerce in migration decisions, and demonstrating the ways in which transport and shipping were connected to ethnic economies of mobility. The project is a monograph study on the role of migration commerce across Europe. The chapter funded by this grant will examine economies of mobility in Central Europe, and the role of Atlantic migration commerce as it affected the territories of the Habsburg/Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Duncan Bare [BIAAS-132202]
Gaps remain in the story of the growth and evolution of pre-centralized US intelligence services operating in Austria. The envisioned project will enable further exploration of both ‘the field’ and ‘headquarters’ components of the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) and Central Intelligence Group (CIG) in the Austrian context. Pursuant to this, the previously unassessed role of the counterintelligence and positive intelligence regional chiefs for Austria in Washington DC (Evelyn M. Williams and David F. Strong, respectively) must be examined in greater detail.
Elisabeth Roehrlich [BIAAS-122114]
At a time of growing distrust in intergovernmental organizations, a look back at the history of contemporary international institutions, most of which were established as a result of US initiatives during and after World War Two, can help us better understand their role during the 20th century. Newly-available archival material, new oral history projects, and an ever-increasing interest of historians in the evolution of global governance call for an in-depth, personal scholarly exchange. The conference aims to assess the state of the field, present and discuss new and empirically-based research, and identify future research agendas and avenues for cooperation. Despite ideological oppositions and political tensions between the Cold War antagonists, the second half of the 20th century has been viewed as a "golden age" of internationalism (A. Iriye ). Vienna, as the site of one of the UN headquarters and with its rich history as a bridge between East and West, presents not only an ideal place to host this conference, but is itself an important part of the history of international organizations during the Cold War. The US strongly supported neutral Austria's ambitions to host intergovernmental organizations since the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna in 1957. The conference is organized by Elisabeth Roehrlich and Eva-Maria Muschik of the University of Vienna, in cooperation with Sandrine Kott (University of Geneva and New York University).
Suzanne Deguilio [BIAAS-112009]
The Nanovic Institute for European Studies received a BIAAS grant for a 2.5-day workshop dedicated to creating a “moral biography” of the 1921 US-Austria Peace Treaty. On August 24, 1921, the United States and Austria signed a Peace Treaty in Vienna in the aftermath of the First World War. This step was necessary for peace building purposes since the US Senate refused to consent to the ratification of the multilateral Treaty of Saint Germain in [...]