Iris Fraueneder, film and media scholar, is a researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH).
She studied theater, film and media studies as well as philosophy at the University of Vienna and completed her studies with a thesis on the transformation of militant cinema aesthetics in Masao Adachi and its reflection in Eric Baudelaire’s essayistic documentary THE ANABASIS… (F 2011). Currently, she is pursuing her PhD in Cultural Analysis at the University of Zurich, where she is also part of the PhD Laboratory “Epistemologies of Aesthetic Practices” at Collegium Helveticum. In her doctoral project, she investigates absences, contingencies, and alternative modes of existence of images (films and photographs from Lebanon and Israel-Palestine). These images have been politically and historically rendered invisible, physically unavailable, or nonexistent through censorship, destruction, abandonment, or other means. To this end, she analyzes current cinematic and curatorial interventions that engage with absence and employ aesthetic strategies to address these issues.
Iris Fraueneder worked as a tutor and contractor at the tfm | Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies and for the research platform “Mobile Cultures and Societies. Interdisciplinary Studies on Transnational Formations” (both at the University of Vienna). Since 2015, she has been involved in film curatorial work at the association Diskollektiv. From 2017 to 2021 she was a research associate in the interdisciplinary SNF project “Contested Amnesia and Dissonant Narratives in the Global South. Post-conflict in Literature, Art and Emergent Archives” at the University of Zurich.
At the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society (LBIGG), which was renamed Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH) in March 2019, she worked on various research projects since 2012, including “Ephemeral Films: National Socialism in Austria” (2011-2016, Future Fund of the Republic of Austria), “Exploring the interwar world: The travelogues of Colin Ross (1885-1945)” (2015-2017, FWF Austrian Science Fund), “I-Media-Cities” (2016–2019, EU Horizon 2020), and “Educational Film Practice in Austria” (2019-2023, FWF Austrian Science Fund).