Calls for Courses

About the Lecture Series:

The lecture series “Art – Research – Gender” will take place at the University for Applied Arts Vienna, and can be completed as an academic course.

Artists, scientists from all disciplines and activists are invited to share their perspectives on the questions mentioned above. We especially like to encourage young researchers to submit abstracts – for example, in the field of their dissertations.

Lecturers will receive a fee of € 300 (VAT included), travel expenses will be covered.

Usually eight lectures are selected per academic year, which all take place on Wednesday evenings at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The lecture is scheduled to last between 45 and a maximum of 60 minutes. A discussion follows the lecture.

Rematriation. Feminist Perspectives on Restitution

This lecture series looks at practices of rematriation as a challenge to colonial logics of ownership, return, and value – going beyond symbolic gestures or return of colonial objects, and instead centering relations to land, ancestors, community, and more-than-human kin.

The series is grounded in a feminist, decolonial critique of art, heritage, and cultural institutions, and takes inspiration from ongoing calls for rematriation as articulated by Indigenous, Black, People of Colour, and Global Majority scholars, artists, and cultural workers. 

Drawing on frameworks such as Françoise Vergès A Programme of Absolute Disorder - Decolonising the Museum [1], or Nish Doshi’s Calling for Rematriation: Art, Heritage, and Sovereignty [2], the series engages with rematriation, a radical form of restitution, as lived, contested, and relational practices in reimagining living together otherwise.

From a feminist perspective, rematriation is understood not only in legal or economic terms, but also as an extension or concretisation of the demand for restitution in terms of epistemic, ecological, cultural and spiritual accountability, repair, and reimagination (Eve Tuck 2011, [3]). The term broadens the perspective on restitution and reparation by presenting it as a method: the return of cultural, spiritual, or material goods to indigenous communities is considered alongside principles associated with femininity and care. This approach contrasts with the colonial or military concept of repatriation. Rematriation encompasses restitution, reparation, and epistemological change.

1. Françoise Vergès. 2024. A Programme of Absolute Disorder. Decolonising the Museum. London: Pluto Press.

2. Nish Doshi. 2023. “Calling for Rematriation: Art, Heritage, and Sovereignty.” In: Climate Justice Code. For artists, art workers, and arts organisations situated in the global north. Edited by Climate Justice Code working group. Utrecht: Casco Art Institute: Working for The Commons, 81-91.

3. Eve Tuck. 2011. “Rematriating curriculum studies,” In: Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 8(1), 34-37.

More specifically, the debates on rematriation challenges art institutions, such as academies, museums, archives, funding bodies, and how they function as gatekeepers of land, of resources, of visibility, and legitimacy in these complex processes of ‘returning’ in ongoing processes of dispossession and land theft. And here, the term 'return' itself is a loaded term, requiring careful definition and site-specific consideration of provenance, illicit acquisition, and ongoing stewardship beyond sending objects back to a presumed place of origin. For example, in Austria, the idea that “no colonies equals no colonialism” continues to limit discussions about how the country profited from colonialism and complicates debates around restitution.

The series is particularly interested in how art and cultural production have been used both as tools of colonial violence - through extraction, decontextualisation, and commodification - and as sites of resistance, healing, refusal, and self-determination. It asks how artistic practices can contribute to ecological justice, land justice, and collective healing in the context of intergenerational trauma, racial capitalism, and climate crisis.

We welcome proposals that explore questions such as:

- How do rematriation processes relate to land, ecology, more-than-human kin, and cultural objects?

- What responsibilities do art academies, museums, and cultural institutions have regarding land ownership, use of resources, and accumulated colonial wealth?

- What alternative models of governance, funding, and institutional models support cultural self-determination?

- How can artistic research address intergenerational trauma, wellbeing, and embodied knowledge?

- How do art and cultural practices resonate with infrastructural critique concerning repatriation processes within the legacy of western institutions?

- In what ways can art and cultural practices contribute to ecological justice, regenerative practices, and land-based healing?

Please submit proposals per email, until April 17, 2026 at the latest, to gleichstellung@uni-ak.ac.at including:

- A working title

- An abstract (2,500-4,500 characters including spaces)

- A short biography

- Complete contact information

The submission can be in German or English.

Scientific-artistic advisory board: Sofia Bempeza, Maria Bussmann, Edith Futscher, Barbara Graf, Nanna Heidenreich, Anita Hosseini, Stefanie Kitzberger, Annette Krauss, Doris Löffler, Kristina Pia Hofer, Julia Sprenger, Jenni Tischer.

Course management: Maria Bussmann

Concept & organization of the lecture series: Doris Löffler

For further information please see https://www.dieangewandte.at/kfg_call-for-lectures

Off University and the Memory Studies Association are inviting proposals for an online course in Memory Studies to be taught by scholars at risk. 

The course should take an interdisciplinary approach to the intersection of memory studies and gender. The course should take an interdisciplinary approach to the intersection of memory studies and gender. Topics may include studies of wars or social conflicts that have escalated into violence and its related traumatic, resistant and conflicting memories, incorporating a gender perspective. Comparative analysis at global or regional scales are welcome, including comparisons of how opposing sides in the same conflict remember and narrate events. The course may cover critical approaches to official memory politics as well as grassroots initiatives and activism. The course may be delivered in English or another language, in line with its transnational perspective. Course proposals should reflect recent discourse in the field, advocate diversity in the canon, and encourage creativity and active student participation.

The course will be taught on the Off University online learning platform during the 2026 winter term (14 weeks, October 2026 – February 2027). The courses is remunerated with a total of 4000,00 € as a teaching honorarium. Off University’s online-learning platform Moodle offers a virtual classroom including chat options, video live streaming, virtual blackboard, file sharing and a whole range of collaborative learning activities. Over the last nine years, we have organized 83 interactive online courses certified by universities with recognized ECTS credits. ECTS credits can be transferred to a home university after completion. Off University is open for everybody to join, not only participants enrolled at a university. 

Application Requirements for Courses: 

• Being politically (1) persecuted and/or displaced and (2) unemployed and/or in material need 

• Ability to teach a self-organized undergraduate or graduate course in your field of research 

• Holding (at least) a master’s degree 

• Instructors are required to act in accordance with the Off University Code of Conduct, which can be found here in German, English and Turkish.

Application

Answer the questionnaire and upload your CV and your course proposal HERE.

If you have questions, please reach out to us only via Signal with the user name @offuniversity.17 or our proton account mail@offuniversity.org

It is indisputable that experiences of mobility and migration have been part of the reality of life for many women and girls – not only in recent history. The mobility of women, whether as daughters, wives, or widows, as workers, nuns, entrepreneurs, or activists, was associated not only with gender-specific expectations, but often also with specific experiences that varied depending on factors such as social and geographical origin, status, age, religious, ethnic, and family affiliation.

The planned workshop at the German Historical Institute in Paris picks up on this and asks how historical actors reflected on, interpreted, and communicated experiences of mobility that contradicted previous expectations. We want to engage in a trans-epochal dialogue and therefore invite contributions from the early modern period to contemporary history.

The planned workshop invites historians and researchers from related disciplines (e.g., historical gender studies, literary studies, etc.) to jointly focus on disappointed expectations associated with women’s mobility since the 17th century.

A joint publication in English is planned. We therefore request only previously unpublished material.