Christina Hainzl studied contemporary history, art history and political communication. She heads the Platform for Sustainable Development (SDGs) and the Research Lab Democracy and Society in Transition at the University for Continuing Education Krems and is an affiliated researcher at the University Ca Foscari, Venice.
She is interested in the transitions and interactions of democracy, society and art. Another focus of her work is science and cultural diplomacy, in which she initiated the first conference on science diplomacy in Central Eastern and South Eastern Europe with diplomatic representatives from 14 European nations (20th – 21st November 2024, Trieste).
- She is project leader of the project ‘European Un/Orders’, which deals with current challenges facing Europe in a global context.
- She represents the university in the European Science Diplomacy Alliance.
- From 2018 to 2022 she headed the Austrian Democracy Lab.
- From 2010 to 2018, she was head of the Master’s programme in Civic Education and developed the focus on radicalisation prevention.
- Until 2010, she worked as a curator and research assistant at various museums (Lentos, Landesmuseum OÖ) and at the Institute for Art after 1945 at KTU Linz and completed several studies and research stays in Florence, Rome, New York and Washington DC.
- She completed internships at the Embassy of the Arab League and the American Anti-Discrimination Committee.
- She has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation Archive Centre and the Emmanuel and Sophie Fohn Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Christina has published on topics such as Austrian-American relations in the visual arts 1945-1962, culture and politics, monuments from the Nazi era in Upper Austria, the complete works of Peter Bischof, and most recently the documentation volume on the artistic part of the symposium ‘Perspectives on Coexistence – On Democracy’ at Künstlerhaus Vienna 2022, which she curated. She is currently researching the topic of Venice and sustainability, as well as dealing with polarisation and conflicts in society, media and culture.