Laura Plochberger studied BA Cultural and Social Anthropology in Vienna and MA International Development at the Universities of Vienna and Duke University, USA. Laura is a PhD candidate in the doc.funds project  “The Dynamics of Change and Logics of Transformation: State, Society, and Economy at Critical Junctures”. She received the 1000 Jahre Niederösterreich Stipend issued by the State of Lower Austria as well as the Arbeiterkammer Oberösterreich Science Award 2023.

Research interests:

• History of Austrian Imperialism
• Decoloniality
• History of Forestry
• Workers Histories
• Catholicism and Empire

Project: 

OUTLAWS: A socio-economic history of illegalized logging in Bukovina (working title)

This project will investigate how the Great Transformation affected forests as well as those in charge of and employed in them in the territory of the (former) Habsburg empire. How did the formal end of empire in 1918 affect the imperial ecology and labor relations of the Habsburg timber industry? How did government officials, Austrian timber businesses, and (migrant) laborers negotiate the transformation of the forest sector after the fall of the Habsburg empire and after critical junctures since?

Publications: (forthcoming)

Plochberger, Laura (2024) Die Fichten von Unten sehen: Ökologische Geschichte im Schatten der Westlichen Moderne. In: Arbeiterkammer Oberösterreich: Zeitschrift WISO 3/4 2024

Plochberger, Laura/ Fahrwald, Dorothea (2024) ‘Nehmen Sie Platz?’ Reflexionen über intergenerationellen, interkulturellen Dialog am Beispiel des Begegnungsprojekts ‘Auf dem Diwan’. In: Reiss, Wolfram/ Kozmann, Verena (Hg.) Interkulturelle und Interreligiöse Begegnung - Grundlage für religionswissenschaftliche und berufliche Expertise? Sammelband. Verlag tba.