Dr. Mag. Herta Nöbauer

Senior Lecturer

Contact Details

E-Mail: herta.noebauer@univie.ac.at

Teaching

Past Courses: u:find

Research Focus Areas

  • Anthropology of and from Snow
  • Human-environment relations in glacier environments in the European Alps
  • Vertical globalisation in the European Alps
  • Human-snow-(environment)-technology relations in the European Alps and elsewhere
  • History of technology as related to snow
  • Environmental Anthropology (especially Political Ecology)
  • Anthropological approaches to "Materiality"
  • Anthropology of Emotions and Affects (especially in work environments and related to nature/the environment)
  • Anthropology of the Body (especially political economy of the body; senses)
  • Masculinity and Gender Studies.

Short Biography

I am working as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology since 2010. Before that I was continuously teaching as an ‘adjunct’ lecturer for 10 years. I have gained extensive national and international experiences with university teaching since then. In my dissertation which I completed in 2009, I presented an ethnography on the political economy of the body in an uncertain academia. Before and during my university study I was working in the private sector and after that at the University of Vienna’s Gender Equality and Diversity Unit from 2000 until 2010. In the latter I conducted a range of research and organisational projects dealing with higher education organisation, gender equality issues and the development and institutionalisation of instruments of promoting women in academia. In addition, I was working as a free-lance researcher for several years. During all these years I was engaged with various university organisation and administration tasks, among them the development of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Curriculum and in the role of the Deputy Director of the Studies Programme (between 2012-2014).

My ongoing great anthropological passion is dedicated to researching the Alps since 2012. The primary focus of my research in and of the Alps lies in the social, ecological and economic processes of living with and of snow. 

Selected Publications

  • Thinking with Verticality: Making a High Place in the Alpine Cryosphere. In: Almut Schneider and Elisabeth Tauber (Eds.): Alpine Ethnographies: Experiences, New Questions and Challenges. Appears at Bolzano University Press (bu,press).
  • 'Our Existence is Literally Melting Away': Narrating and Fighting Climate Change in a Glacier Ski Resort in Austria. In: Susanna Hoffman, Thomas Hylland Eriksen & Paulo Mendes (Eds.): Cooling Down. Local Responses to Global Climate Change. New York, London: Berghahn 2022, pp. 223-245.
  • Weather, Agency and Values at Work in a Glacier Ski Resort in Austria. In: Paul Sillitoe (Ed.): The Anthroposcene of Weather and Climate: Ethnographic Contributions to the Climate Change Debate. New York, London: Berghahn 2021, pp. 124-145.
  • Von der Goldmine zum Gletscher: All Weather Snow als multiples Frontier-Phänomen. [From the gold-mine to the glacier: All Weather Snow as a multiple frontier phenomenon]. In: Zeitschrift für Technikgeschichte, 2018, 85(1), pp. 3-38.
  • Männlichkeiten im Aufbruch: Krisen und Re-Formationen von Männlichkeiten im globalen Zeitalter. In: Susanne Hochreiter und Silvia Stoller (Eds.): Mann - Männer - Männlichkeiten. Intersdisziplinäre Beiträge aus den Masculinity Studies. Wien: Praesens Verlag, 2018, pp. 28-43.
  • Care als globales Ketten-Phänomen: Geschlecht, Migration und die globale Ökonomie von Fürsorge und Mitgefühl. [Care as a global chain phenomenon: Gender, migration and the global economy of compassion]. In: G. Seiser (ed.): Ökonomische Anthropologie. Einführung und Fallbeispiele. Wien: Facultas WUV, 2017, pp. 319-342.
  • Die multidimensionale Reise technischer Schneeerzeugung: Rekonfigurationen von maskuliner Technik, Umwelt und Ökonomie. [The multidimensional journey of snow making technology: Reconfigurations of masculine technology, the environment and economy]. In: Blätter für Technikgeschichte 2017, Vol. 78/79 „Materielle Kultur“, pp. 41-61.
  • Universalismus, Differenz und Intersektionalität. Feminismus, Genderforschung und Kulturanthropologie. [Universalism, Difference and Intersectionality: Feminism, Gender Studies and Cultural Anthropology]. In: K.R. Wernhart and W. Zips (Eds.): Ethnohistorie. Rekonstruktion und Kulturkritik. Eine Einführung. Wien: Promedia, 2014, pp. 181-203. (with B. Fuchs and P. Zuckerhut).
  • Affective landscapes in academia: Emotional labour, vulnerability and uncertainty in late-modern academic work. In: International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion (IJWOE), 2012, 5(2): 132-144.

Lectures, Presentations, Workshops

Paper Presentation "Temporal and Spatial Disorders in the Alpine Cryosphere – And What to do Now and Here?". Symposium "Experiencing Climate and Environmental Changes in and Beyond Europe", Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts & University Ljubljana, Ljubljana (6 May 2022)

Guest lecture "Toward a multiscalar understanding of a political ecology of snow and ice". Lecture Series "Dis-/Entangling perspetives in material research", Humboldt University Berlin (29 November 2021)

Lecture "Unsere Existenz schmilzt wortwörtlich dahin! - Klimakrise in den österreichischen Alpen". Evangelische Pfarrer*innen-Tagung "Schöpfungsverantwortung". Reichenau a.d. Rax (31 August 2021)

Workshop organisation (with Gertraud Seiser) "The juncture of dis-/comforts: Environment and tourism in mountain regions in Europe and beyond". Vienna Anthropology Days (VANDA), Vienna (1 October 2020)

Lecture "Vanishing Ice  - and After: Encountering the Anthropocene of a Glacier Ski Resort in Austria". Conference "Vanishing Ice: Human and Natural Impacts of a Cahnging Cryosphere", organised by the Vienna Anthropocene Network, Vienna (22 January 2020)

Paper Presentation "Thinking with Snow, Verticality and Globality: Anthropological Configurations of the European Alps in the 21st Century". Workshop "Conducting Research in Alpine Communities: Social, Ethical and Epistemological Challenges and Innovations", Max-Planck-Institute (MPI) in Halle/Saale (26 Sept 2019)

Paper Presentation '"Our existence is literally melting away': Narrating and fighting vanishing glaciers and job insecurity in a glacier ski resort in Austria". 14. SIEF Congress in Santiago de Compostella, (16 April 2019)

Lecture "Weather, Distributed Agency and Values at Work in a Glacier Ski Resort in Austria". Institutskolloquium at the Institute of Social Anthropology, University Berne (19 Feb 2019)

Paper presentation “Distributed agency in ethnographic human-snow-technology encounters”. Workshop “Materiality and Agency”, organised by the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Vienna, Faculty research topic “Knowledge Societies in Turbulent Times”. (30 June 2017)

Paper presentation “Von der Goldmine zum Gletscher-Skigebiet: All Weather Snow als multiples Frontier-Phänomen”. Conference „Frontiertechnologien – Technik in extremen Umwelten“, Technical Univeristy Bochum, Germany (3 March 2017)

Paper presentation “Troubling weather, snow management and work ethics in a glacier ski resort in the Austrian Alps”, Conference “Anthropology, Weather and Climate Change”, organised by Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI), British Museum, London (28 May 2016)

Keynote lecture “The dis-/comfort of snow: Fabricating snow scapes and identity in the Austrian Alps in times of troubles”. Postgraduate Conference in Anthropology, University of St. Andrews, Scotland. (27 May 2015)

Oganisation of international workshop “Enacting Modalities of Feeling: Anthropological Explorations into Affective, Sensual and Material Connections”, University of Vienna, Dept. of Social and Cultural Anthropology (with B. Hadolt and A. De Antoni) (25-27 Feb 2015)

Invited lecture “Technology, Climate Change, and Engineering Solutions”, Climate Histories Discussion Series, University of Cambridge, UK. (5 Nov 2014)