Karin Kaltenbrunner studied history and theatre, film and media studies at the University of Vienna. Since 2005, she has been particularly active in the field of archival science and has been involved in various university and non-university indexing projects, including at the Austrian Film Museum and the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance. In 2013-2014 she participated in the development of the virtual exhibition “Der Erste Weltkrieg und das Ende der Habsburgermonarchie” (comissioned by Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.)

At the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society (LBIGG), which was renamed Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH) in March 2019, she was a researcher in the project “Sicherung, Aufarbeitung und Erschließung des Archivs der Freien Österreichischen Jugend” (“Securing, Processing and Indexing the Archive of the Free Austrian Youth“, 2014-2016, Future Fund of the Republic of Austria and National Fund of the Republic of Austria) as well as a freelancer in the project “Die Kinderjause. On the History of a Marginalised Youth”. As part of a course at the Austrian National Library, she worked on a supplement to these two projects and indexed the photographic holdings of the Free Austrian Youth.

She is interested in fantastic film and published the monograph Mad Medicine. Zur Repräsentation des Wissenschaftlers im Frankenstein-Zyklus der Hammer Film Productions (1957-1974)