Contact

E-Mail: katharina.foeger@univie.ac.at

Katharina Föger, MA BA BEd

Prae-Doc

Katharina Föger is a university assistant (pre-doc) at the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna, working in the field of Austrian Contemporary History since 1918 in an International Context under the professorship of Univ.-Prof. Dr. Lucile Dreidemy (starting October 1, 2025).

Katharina Föger studied History and German Studies in Innsbruck, Prague, and Łódź and is a graduate of the Erasmus Mundus Master's program “Global Studies” at the universities of Leipzig, Addis Ababa, and Ghent (2023–2025). Between 2020 and 2025, she worked as a project associate on the research project “Hubs of Decolonisation: Anti-imperial Infrastructures, Visions, and Mobilities in Cairo, Accra, and Dar es Salaam, 1956–1966,” led by Ass.-Prof. Dr. Eric Burton at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck. Additionally, she completed internships at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies in Addis Ababa, the archive of the Chamber of Labor in Tyrol, and the Tyrolean State Museums, and she was a member of the editorial team for the journal historia.scribere.

Her research focuses on the global history of development policies, transnational solidarity networks, and socialist internationalisms in the 20th century. A particular emphasis is placed on North-South and East-South relations in the context of the Cold War and decolonization, as well as on transnational entanglements in Southern and East Africa. Her research on these topics has been published in numerous academic journals, including zeitgeschichte, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, Africa is a Country, and historia.scribere.

Her dissertation project examines practices of internationalist solidarity intersecting with development agendas in Austria from the 1960s to the 1980s. The focus is on non-state actors within trade unions and the Catholic Church, which shaped key discourses on social justice, anti-colonialism, and global responsibility. The project investigates how trade unions and the Catholic Church expressed solidarity with anti-colonial movements in the Global South while actively contributing to Austrian development agendas through training programs, fundraising campaigns, or (union) partnerships. These groups operated within overlapping geographic spaces - particularly in Anglophone Southern and East Africa - and, despite ideological differences, developed surprisingly similar narratives and approaches to solidarity as a political practice. This dissertation seeks to contribute to the historiography of Austrian post-1945 social history by examining the transnational arenas in which non-state actors operated. It explores how notions of solidarity - shaped by media and institutional frameworks - intersect with (post)colonial hierarchies, gender, and class.