Franz Graf
Franz Graf
QUALIFICATIONS
2017 Dr. phil., Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna
2009 Mag. phil., Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna
PRINCIPAL RESEARCH INTERESTS
Memory and Environment; Political Anthropology; Populist Dynamics; Human-Environment Relations; Borderland Ecologies; Infrastructure and Exclusion; Racism; Participant Observation and Ethnography; Ritualization and Ethics
RESEARCH PROFILE
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project, “Memory and Populism from Below” (PI Johana Wyss), where I contribute environmental anthropological approaches to the overall goals of the project. Following a brief career in the construction industry, I began my formal anthropological training and research in the Valley of Mexico, investigating knowledge practices and identity formation in the context of transnational revitalization efforts among local shamanic groups. For my PhD, I pursued an ethnography of human-environment relationships among modern Pagans, Earth lovers, and new animists in Southwest England, examining their longing for a “good life” on a threatened planet. A focus on ethnographic fieldwork as a form of interactive and experiential learning has been central to my approach, including long-term teaching and field school experiences through the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna.
My time at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, with its history of connecting dissenting thinkers from Eastern Europe with scholars from the West, deepened my interest in questions related to my personal history as someone from Burgenland—a post-imperial borderland between contemporary Austria and Hungary. My current research thus integrates ecological scholarship with theoretical approaches from memory studies. I am particularly interested in the politics of memory in relation to ecological and social transformations and how such remembrances shape and are shaped by populist discourses deployed by local actors.
Edited Volumes
2019 Ritualisierung - Mediatisierung - Performance. [Ritualization - Mediatization - Performance] Göttingen: V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press. (co-editors Luger, Martin – Budka, Philipp)
Journal Articles
2023 Teaching Local Anthropology on Climate Change: Ethnographic Field Schools at Lake Neusiedl, Austria. Policies & Practices 153(December): 1–14.
Book Chapters
2022 Ecological Subjectivity: A Case of Chemical and Other More-than-Human Sensitivities. In Masana, Lina – Martínez-Hernáez, Angel (eds.) Subjectivities and Afflictions in Medical Anthropology. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, pp. 153–173.
2019 “Ein Leben scannen”: Fragmentarische Retrospektive von und auf Manfred Kremser. [“Scanning a Life”: Fragmentary Retrospective by and about Manfred Kremser.] In Luger, Martin – Graf, Franz – Budka, Philipp (eds.) Ritualisierung - Mediatisierung – Performance. Göttingen: V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press, pp. 253–283 (co-author Kremser, Manfred – Seiser, Gertraud)
2019 Kultur- und Sozialanthropologische Perspektiven auf Ritualisierung, Mediatisierung und Performance - Eine Einleitung. [Cultural and Social Anthropological Perspectives on Ritualization, Mediatization, and Performance – An Introduction.] In Luger, Martin – Graf, Franz – Budka, Philipp (eds.) Ritualisierung - Mediatisierung - Performance. Göttingen: V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press, pp. 15–28 (co-author Luger, Martin – Budka, Philipp)
2017 Emerging Animistic Socialities? An Example of Transnational Appropriation of Curanderismo. In Hardon, Anita and Hadolt, Bernhard (eds.) New Socialities in Twenty-First Century Health Care. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, pp. 25–41.
2013 “Ich bin keine Mexikanerin, aber ich bin Mexica”: Über die Aneignung einer mexikanischen Heilpraxis im Umfeld von Revitalisierung und internationaler Verbreitung. [“I Am Not Mexican, but I Am Mexica”: On the Appropriation of a Mexican Healing Practice in the Context of Revitalization and Global Transmission.] In Futterknecht, Veronika – Noseck-Licul, Michaela – Kremser, Manfred (eds.) Heilung in den Religionen: Religiöse, spirituelle und leibliche Dimensionen. Vienna: LIT Verlag, pp. 467–483.
Ongoing Projects and Grants
2024–2028 Memory and Populism from Below (MEMPOP), ERC-2022-STG (ID: 101076092), PI: Wyss, Johana. Coordinated by the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences. Postdoctoral Researcher.
Teaching Experience
Since 2011 Lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna.
Invited Talks, Public Lectures or Roundtables
2023 August, 25. Keynote lecture – Teaching Local Anthropology on Climate: Ethnographic Field Schools at Lake Neusiedl, Austria. CRG Teacher’s Workshop, Teaching Local Histories and Geographies of Climate-induced Migration in Kolkata, Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata.
2023 May, 22. Invited discussant: Bringing Beauty into Life: How Soviet Workers Discovered Aesthetics after Stalin, by Serguei Oushakine, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna
2021 January, 21. “Nueva” Filosofia Nahuatl: Zur Revitalisierung einer magisch-religiösen Heilpraxis und ihrer internationalen Verbreitung [“Nueva” Filosofia Nahuatl: On the Revitalization of a Magical-Religious Healing Practice and Its International Dissemination]. Invited lecture of the World Museum Vienna
2020 September, 14. Invited discussant: How to Be a Climate Change Journalist in Ukraine and Why Environmental Storytelling Can Help Spread Important Ideas, by Mariana Verbovska, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna.
2019 April, 1. Natur, Religion und Wissenschaft: Ethnische Religionen und aktuelle Debatten [Nature, Religion, and Science: Ethnic Religions and Current Debates]. Invited lecture of Vikariat Wien-Stadt, Vienna
Conference and Workshop Organisation
2024 December 1–4. Memory and Populism from the Margins. Conference organized at Vila Lanna, Prague, Czech Republic. Funded by the European Union (ERC MEMPOP). (co-organisers Brunet, Ioana – Holzbachová, Lucie – Joštová, Kateřina – Mafizzoli, Laura – Málková, Mária – Nikolovska, Astrea – Vonnak, Diána – Wyss, Johana)
2023 January – May 2024: Monthly Lectures and Weekly Fellows’ Colloquia at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. (co-organisers Derntl, Maria – Hagedorn, Ludger)
Public Outreach
2018 June – April 2019: Cultural education at World Museum Vienna (WMW). Developing and implementing visitor programs for the ethnographic collection.
2018 Stereotype und Perturbationen: Ansätze systemisch-ökologischer Kritik in der späten Moderne. [Stereotypes and Perturbations: Approaches to Systemic-Ecological Critique in Late Modernity] Systemische Notizen 18(2): 14–18. (co-author Luger, Martin)
2016 Public Workshop Series “Anthropologie des Bewusstseins” [Anthropology of Consciousness], Awareness Research Group – ARG, funded by the City of Vienna (MA 7). (co-organisers Fordinal, Birgit – Haller, Stephanie – Luger, Martin – Vogl, Julia)
