Career

Professional Career

1975–1978: Research Officer at the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research, Minoritenplatz, Vienna, under Minister Dr Hertha Firnberg, with a focus on higher education documentation.

1975–1976: Lecturer at the Federal College of Education, Ettenreichgasse, Vienna.

1975: Teacher at the academic secondary school of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, Augartenpalais.

1975–1977: Lecturer and organiser at the Institute for International Cooperation in Vienna; seminar leader, exhibition organiser, and lecturer in the field of political education for the Austrian Trade Union Federation and the Vienna Chamber of Labour.

1975–1977: Volunteer with the Auschwitz Committee, serving as a driver and accompanying groups on visits to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1978–1979: Austrian Lecturer at the Universidade Clássica de Lisboa, Lisbon.

1979–1980: Research residency in preparation for habilitation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

1980–1982: Austrian Lecturer at the Universidade Clássica de Lisboa, Lisbon.

1983–2004: Lecturer at the Department of German Studies, University of Innsbruck, specialising in feminism and psychoanalysis in literary studies.

1984–1989: Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame’s Innsbruck programme.

1989: Lecture and research residency at the University of Louisiana, New Orleans.

1993–2000: Psycho-oncology therapist and team supervisor at the District Hospital in Hall in Tirol.

1995–2000: Lecturer at the School of Nursing in Hall in Tirol, within the specialist training programme for psychiatric nurses. Focus: burnout prevention.

1999–2008: Contract Professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Faculty of Education in Brixen-Bressanone.

2012–2015: Volunteer librarian at the synagogue of the Jewish Community for Tyrol and Vorarlberg.

2015–present: Volunteer organiser and lecturer at the Jüdisches Lehrhaus Innsbruck.

1988–present: Psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice in Innsbruck, Hall in Tirol, and at Lake Achensee.

Psychoanalyst and supervisor: Edmund Frühmann (Vienna–Salzburg)

Teacher and mentor: Paul Parin (Zurich)

Buddhist teachers: Tarab Tulku and Lene Handberg (Copenhagen); Gonsar Rinpoche and Geshe Tsültrim (Vevey–Feldkirch)

Academic Research

Major research projects funded by the Austrian Ministry of Science, the Federal Chancellery, and the Austrian National Bank examined popular women’s literature from the eighteenth century onwards; the representation and role of women and girls in Austrian school readers; women’s reading habits since the founding of the Austrian Republic; public health policy in “Red Vienna”; Social Democratic weekly publications concerning women between 1918 and 1934; and the representation in the print media of the Second Austrian Republic of the demand for university graduates.

Numerous publications and lectures in the fields of women’s studies and gender studies, including co-editorship of the first Austrian collected volume on the history of women’s literature from the Middle Ages onwards.

Research on the application of psychological and psycho-oncological approaches in general hospitals, as well as studies on gambling addiction, sexual masochism, burnout, and exhaustion. Further work includes several unpublished case studies from psychoanalytic practice.

Academic presentations at conferences in Munich, Florence, Shanghai, Moscow, Chennai, and Helsinki.

Since retiring from academia, I have continued to participate regularly in international congresses and conferences, presenting contributions of my own.

Personal Life

Long-term partnership and marriage to the Portuguese philosopher, poet, and Wittgenstein translator M. S. Lourenço (1936–2009).

Their daughter, Leonora Lourenço, was a medical student (1981–2001).