Mag. Clemens Pfeffer

Doctoral researcher with "Tackling Empires"

 

Contact

Mail: clemens.pfeffer@univie.ac.at
Phone: +43-1-4277-41218


ORCID

academia.edu

 

Clemens Pfeffer is a historian and has been a research associate in the project "Tackling Empire: The Post-Imperial and the Colonial in Austria and Hungary, 1918-1939" at the Institute of Contemporary History at the University of Vienna since May 2025.

After studying Development Studies at the University of Vienna, he worked as a university assistant (pre-doc) in the field of "Historical Development Research" at the Department of Development Studies from 2010 to 2014. Since 2009, he has also taught at various universities (University of Vienna, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Paris Lodron University Salzburg) and universities of applied sciences (FH BFI Vienna, FH Campus Vienna). In his teaching, he deals with topics such as colonialism, racism, global inequalities and theories of political resistance as well as scientific working techniques.

Between 2015 and 2025, he was managing editor and production manager of the Austrian Journal for Development Studies (JEP) and the academic textbook series Gesellschaft - Entwicklung - Politik (GEP), published by the Mattersburger Kreis für Entwicklungspolitik.

Alongside his employment in the publishing sector, he wrote his PhD thesis on the life and work of the Cologne sociologist and anti-colonial pacifist Hanna Meuter (1889-1964). In this study, he focused on the interplay between political activism and critical science and explored the ways in which Meuter became one of the few German sociologists who managed to grasp National Socialism sociologically at the very moment of its reign of terror.

 

 

Main areas of research

  • Colonialism and anti-colonialism
  • History of sociology
    • Women in early German sociology
    • "Cologne School" of sociology
    • German sociology and National Socialism
  • Transnational movement history of the 1920s/30s
    • Women's movement
    • Pacifism and anti-colonialism
    • Youth and life reform movements
  • Missionary history and missionary discourses
  • Postcolonial theories and analyses

 

 

Selected publications

  • Stimmen des Antikolonialismus. Eine globalhistorische Spurensammlung 1615-1917, hg. zusammen mit Lucile Dreidemy, Johannes Knierzinger und David Mayer, Wien: Mandelbaum 2025.
  • Missionshistoriographie post 1968. Postkoloniale Perspektiven avant la lettre. in: Theologie und Postkolonialismus, hg. von Sebastian Pittl, Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet2018.
  • Koloniale Phantasien made in Austria. Koloniale Afrikarepräsentationen im österreichischen Nationalrat am Wendepunkt zum Postkolonialismus, 1955–1965. in: Afrika im Visier, hg. Manuel Menrath,Zürich: Chronos Verlag 2012.
  • Koloniale Repräsentationen Südwestafrikas im Spiegel der Rheinischen Missionsgesellschaft, 1842-1884, in: Stichproben, Vienna Journal of African Studies 22 (2012), 12, 1-33.
  • Rethinking Resistance in Development Studies, in: JEP - Journal für Entwicklungspolitik/Austrian Journal of Development Studies 30(2014), 1, 4-19.