Michaela Scharf is a researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH). She is a member of the international research network BTWH (Berkeley/Tübingen/Vienna/Harvard).

Michaela Scharf studied history and psychology at the University of Vienna.

Since 2010 she has been a researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for History and Society (LBIGG), which was renamed Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (LBIDH) in March 2019. She has worked on the projects “Film.Stadt.Wien: A Transdisciplinary Exploration of Vienna as a Cinematic City” (2009-2011, WWTF Vienna Science and Technology Fund) and “Sichtung und Aufarbeitung des Filmarchivbestandes media wien” (“Exploration and processing of the media wien film archive holdings” (2011-2017, City of Vienna MA 7).

From January 2013 to June 2014, she worked on the exhibition project “The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy” at Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.. From December 2015 to 2018, Michaela Scharf was a research assistant in the project “65 Years of the Film Academy” at the Film Academy Vienna, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

From 2016-2019 she worked on her dissertation entitled “Social and aesthetic practices of self-assurance in Austrian amateur films from the National Socialist era” as part of the DOC-team project “Doing Amateur Film. Social and Aesthetic Practices in Austrian Amateur Film from the 1920s to the 1980s” (2016-2019 OEAW Austrian Academy of Sciences). In January 2020, she received the Marietta Blau Scholarship from the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research for her dissertation.

Since October 2021, she has been a research assistant at the Institute of History at the Justus Liebig University Giessen in the professorship for specialised journalism in history (50% position).

At the same time, she participated in the project “Visual History of the Holocaust: Rethinking Curation in the Digital Age” (2019-2023, EU Horizon 2020) at LBIDH. Since April 2024, she has been working on the project “Modern Vienna Time Machine” (2023-2025, City of Vienna MA 7) at LBIDH.