Dr. Immanuel Harisch

Phone: +43 677 624 70 623
Email: Immanuel.Harisch[at]uibk.ac.at
Room no. 40627

Research interests

  • Global histories of transport in the 20th century, with a focus on buses and lorries
  • Trade union and labour history, with a focus on Europe-Africa relations
  • History of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)
  • East-South relations during the Cold War
  • History of ideas and knowledge in Africa, particularly academic knowledge production

Studies and academic career

  • since 06/2026 Research assistant at the Department of Contemporary History at the University of Innsbruck, project "Spare Parts. A Transnational History of Automobility”
  • 03-06/2026 Visiting Professorship “Global Histories of Labour and Transport” at the Institute of Contemporary History, University of Vienna
  • 10-11/2025 Visiting Fellow, Visegrad Scholarship at the Open Society Archives, Budapest
  • 2022—2025 Post-Doctoral Researcher, “A Socialist Workplace in Postcolonial Africa: A Connected History of the Yugoslav Workforce in Zambia” (Research Project funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF and led by Dr. Goran Musić, University of Vienna)
  • 10-12/2024, Senior Fellow Researcher, Elisabeth-List-Fellowship-Programme for Gender Research, University of Graz
  • 2022W—2025S Lecturership, African Studies, Global History and Development Studies, University of Vienna. Selected Courses: 2025S: UE New Cold War History in a Global Perspective; FM2 Africa’s Transnational Economic Development Cooperation 1950s - 1990s; UE A Transregional History of the Balkans and East Africa through Local-Language Sources; 2024W: 2024S: KU Methods of Historical Research and Writing; UE Reading Course Global History and Global Studies - Global Labor Histories of Africa in the 19th and 20th Century; 2023W: UE Working Skills in Global History; 2023S: KU Methods of Historical Research and Writing; 2022W: KU Africa and/within Global Labour History - Approaches, Debates, Sources
  • 2018—2021 University Assistant Prae-Doc, Research Platform “Mobile Cultures and Societies”, University of Vienna (FWF Project based at the University of Vienna)
  • 10/2017—03/2018 Student Assistant, assisting Assoz. Prof. Birgit Englert at the Institute of African Studies, University of Vienna
  • Winter Term 2016 Erasmus+ Exchange Student at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
  • 03/2016—07/2016 Student Assistant, assisting Dr. Arno Sonderegger at the Institute of African Studies, University of Vienna

Editorship Anthologies

Articles and Book Chapters

  • ​with  Johanna Wolf and Magaly Rodriguez, “Towards Global Communisms? The World Federation of Trade Unions and Labour Internationalism: An Introduction”, In:  International Review of Social History, Special Issue. 
  • with  Johanna Wolf und Magaly Rodriguez, “The WFTU and the Labour Movements of Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America during the Cold War”, First View, S. 1—27.
  • with Gédéon Bangali, “A Communist Ambassador of Labour. Abdoulaye Diallo, the World Federation of Trade Unions, and Unionism in Francophone West Africa, 1947—1957”, In: Immanuel R. Harisch, Johanna Wolf, Magaly Rodriguez (eds.), International Review of Social History, Special Issue “The WFTU and the Labour Movements of Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America during the Cold War”, First View, S. 1—31.
  • with Goran Musić, “Industrial Participatory Democracy: A ‘Paper Tiger’ of the Zambian One-Party State and Its Transnational Entanglements”, In: Ana Kladnik (ed.): Visions and Practices of Democracy in Socialist and Post-Colonial States. London 2026, S. 351—378.
  • with Thula Simpson, “The Evolution of Africanist Historiography”, In: Thula Simpson, Immanuel R. Harisch (eds.): The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial African Historiography. Abingdon, Oxon, S. 3–26.
  • “The Dar es Salaam Schools of History, c. 1960s–1980s”. In: Thula Simpson, Immanuel R. Harisch (eds.): The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial African Historiography, Abingdon, Oxon, S. 88-113.
  • with Goran Musić, Teckson Njovu, Joy Phiri, “Who is to Blame for the Burning Buses? Negotiating Media Control and Yugoslav-backed Development in Zambia's Postcolonial Press.”, In: Stichproben. Vienna Journal of African Studies 25/49 (2025), S. 25-50, DOI: 10.25365/phaidra.737_02.
  • with Goran Musić, “Workers’ Proto-Diplomacy: Early Contacts between Zambian and Yugoslav Trade Unions, 1959–1962”, In: International Review of Social History 69/3 (2024), S. 411–38, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859024000622.
  • “Training African Women Trade Unionists in Inter/National Trade Union Movements in the 1950s and 1960s. A History under Constraint”. In: Revue d’histoire Contemporaine de l’Afrique, no. 6–7 (2024), S. 57–77, https://doi.org/10.51185/journals/rhca.2024.060704.
  • “La Formation des syndicalistes Africaines au sein des mouvements syndicaux inter/nationaux.” In : Revue d’histoire Contemporaine de l’Afrique, no. 6–7 (2024), S. 57–76, https://doi.org/10.51185/journals/rhca.2024.060704.
  • „Gewerkschaftshochschulen als Wissenszentren. Ein Fokus auf afrikanische Kursteilnehmer*innen als (Ko-)Produzent*innen von Wissen während der 1960er-Jahre des Kalten Krieges“. In: Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 34/3 (2023), S. 101–17, doi:10.25365/OEZG-2023-34-3-7.
  • with Eric Burton, “The missing link? Western communists as mediators between the East German FDGB, the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and African trade unions in the late 1950s and early 1960s”, In: International Labor and Working-Class History, 103 (2023), S. 292–311.
  • “Nkrumahism, East Germany and the South-East ties of  Ghanaian trade unionist J. A. Osei during the Cold War 1960s.”, In: International Journal of African Historical Studies, 54/3 (2021), S. 309–331. 
  • “Facets of Walter Rodney‘s Pan-African Intellectual Activism during his Dar es Salaam Years, 1966-1974”, In: Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien / Vienna Journal of African Studies, 38 (2020), S. 101-129.
  • „Mit gewerkschaftlichem Gruß!“: Afrikanische GewerkschafterInnen an der FDGB-Gewerkschaftshochschule Fritz Heckert in Bernau bei Berlin, In: Stichproben. Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien / Vienna Journal of African Studies, 34 (2018), S. 77-109.
  • Bartering Coffee, Cocoa and W50 Trucks: The Trade Relationships of the GDR, Angola and São Tomé in a Comparative Perspective, In: Global Histories 3/2 (2027), S. 43-59.

​

“Spare Parts: A Transnational History of Automobility”

funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

Duration: 2026–2029

National project participants: Assoc. Prof. Eric Burton (mentor)
International project participants: Clarence Chongo, University of Zambia – Zambia; Frank Edward, University of Dar es Salaam – Tanzania; Joshua Grace, University of South Carolina – United States of America; Anna Calori, University of Glasgow – United Kingdom.

Functions

Memberships

  • European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH)
  • International Conference of Labour and Social History (ITH)
  • Southern Africa Documentation and Cooperation Centre (SADOCC)
  • Mattersburger Kreis for Development Policy

Awards and honours

  • 2023 Walter Markov Prize of the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH) 
  • 2024 Young Scholars’ Award of the German Association for African Studies, for his outstanding dissertation entitled Great Hopes, False Promises. African Trade Unions in the World of Organized Labor. Institutions, Networks, and Mobilities during the Cold War 1950s and 1960s
  • Completion scholarship of the Doctoral School of Historical Studies (11/2021 - 01/2022)
  • Performance scholarship of the University of Vienna (2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17
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