Lost in Administration
The research project Lost in Administration has been based at the University of Salzburg since 2013 and aims to reconstructs the life stories of the children of African-American GIs and Austrian women as well as the (welfare) political treatment of these children on the basis of biographic narrative interviews and research in Austrian and American archives.
In 2016, VWI team member Philipp Rohrbach curated the exhibition SchwarzÖsterreich. Die Kinder afroamerikanischer Besatzungssoldaten (Black Austria: The Children of African American Soldiers of the Occupation) together with the freelance historian Niko Wahl, which was on display at the Vienna Museum of Folk Life & Folk Art from April to August 2016. This exhibition, which received critical acclaim in the media and among a broad public, was supported by the VWI, as was a first-ever meeting of the interview partners which took place in the course of the exhibition.
The VWI is also involved in organising and conducting a scholarly symposium on this theme in the autumn of 2017.