Karin Maria Schmidlechner

Initiator of Styria´s Women History

Born in Graz in 1954, the historian, who had already become a committed feminist during her studies (from 1972) of history, German language and literature, and philosophy at the University of Graz, became a committed feminist. She completed her studies sub auspiciis with a dissertation on “Styrian Industrial Workers from 1875 to 1890” and worked as a research assistant at the Styrian Chamber of Labour from 1980 to 1984. Employed since 1984 as a university assistant in the Contemporary History Department of the Institute of History, her interest in women’s history, which had developed since 1980, manifested itself both in her academic work and in her lectures, through which she was able to inspire many students with an enthusiasm for women’s history. With her paper “Women‘s Lives in Men‘s Worlds. A Contribution to the History of Styrian Women in the Post-war Period (1945–1951)” in 1995, she was only the third woman in Austria to qualify as a professor of contemporary history and the first person to address a topic related to women’s history in a postdoctoral thesis.

Since 1995, as a professor of contemporary history in Graz and in the United States, she has intensified her research on women’s and gender issues, held countless courses on the subject, and supervised numerous theses and dissertations on related topics. To promote young academics, she initiated the publication series Grazer Gender Studies (Gender Studies in Graz) in 1994. Through her commitment, she not only played a key role in establishing gender studies at the Institute of History and – in collaboration with other women academics – subsequently also at the University of Graz but also contributed to realising the vision of a gender-equal society through her activities outside the university.