Contested Memory

Reinhard Braun, author and curator, lives near Graz. Recent writings on Ursula Biemann, Mladen Bizumic, Regina Hübner, Markus Krottendorfer, transparadiso and Herwig Turk. Current curatorial project: “Herwig Turk: The Many Lives of the Tagliamento”, Galerie Freihausgasse, Villach. Historical research for the project “TRANSFORMATOR. Space of Memory & Transformation”, Bad Eisenkappel/Železna Kapla, 2025/26.

Markus Gönitzer is chairman of Društvo/Verein Peršman, the association responsible for the pedagogical and scholarly curation of Muzej/Museum Peršman. He is a cultural worker whose work focuses on memory politics and the role of cultural initiatives in social change. He is co-editor of “Women and Partisan Art: Aesthetics and Practices of Resistance in Yugoslavia and Carinthia”, 2025.

Heimo Halbrainer is a historian and curator in Graz, director of CLIO – Association for Historical, Cultural and Educational Work, and a member of staff at the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Graz. Numerous research projects, exhibitions and publications on regional Jewish history, Nazi rule, resistance and persecution, and the handling of the post-1945 period.

Sanja Horvatinčić is a Research Associate at the Institute of Art History in Zagreb. Her research focuses on monuments and memorial heritage in socialist and post-socialist Southeast Europe. She leads “Heritage from Below | Drežnica: Traces and Memories 1941–1945” (since 2019), an international, interdisciplinary project on antifascist heritage sites in Drežnica. She is author of numerous publications, including the co-edited “Shaping Revolutionary Memory: The Production of Monuments in Socialist Yugoslavia”, 2023.

Peter Pirker, historian and political scientist, research associate at the Carinthian State Museum and at the Institute for Cultural Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences, co-editor of “Hinschaun! Poglejmo. Carinthia and National Socialism. Koroška in nacionalsocializem”.

Ljiljana Radonić is Deputy Director of the Institute for Cultural Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), where she led the ERC project “Globalised Memorial Museums”. Her habilitation thesis, “The Second World War in Post-Socialist Memorial Museums”, was published in 2021.

Helena Verdel studied political science and theatre studies in Vienna and Ljubljana. As an Austrian-Slovenian journalist, she published, amongst other works, a comprehensive account of the history of Carinthian Slovenes in the 20th century in 1990.