Geschichtswissenschaften
Dr. Muriel Alejandra González Athenas
Contact
Phone.: +43 512 507-43223
Email: muriel.gonzalez-athenas@uibk.ac.at
Room number: 40731, 7th Floor
This website features the Department of Gender History at the University of Innsbruck and the Center for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Innsbruck (CGI).
News
Gender Orders in Transition Once again this year, we are organizing the Forum for PhD Students and Researchers in Austria and Neighbouring Regions. Everyone is cordially invited to submit ideas by May 15.
When and where: November 26–27, 2026, at the Center for Regional History in Brixen
Feminist City Talks with Rebekka Endler: Witches, Bitches, IT-Girls, on October 28, 2025, at 7:00 p.m.
A collaboration between the City Library and the CGI—directed by Dr. Muriel González Athenas
New Publication
González-Athenas, Muriel, Susanne Huber, Katrin Köppert, and Friederike Nastold. 2025. “Membra(I)nes. Technologies, Theories, and Aesthetics of Impermeability. Introduction.” Open Gender Journal, No. 1 (November). https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2025.400.
Decentering Images of Europe, in: Maisha-Maureen Auma/Denise Bergold-Caldwell/Inka Greusin/Ilona Pache/Marianne Schmidbaur/Susanne Völker/Christine Vogt-William, Gender Studies Otherwise? Reflections and Practices of Decolonization. Revisited – Re-readings from Gender and Queer Studies, 2025 Wiesbaden, pp. 157–178.
“Seeing Women Artisans’ Scope for Action Through Experience” in: Andreas Neumann / Pia Marzell / Lisa Oelmayer / Katharina Breidenbach / Silke Meinhardt / Maren Möhring (eds.), Gender History Remains?! Challenges and Perspectives of Historical Gender Research, Bielefeld 2025, pp. 189–211.
About Me
Since October 2022, I have been a postdoctoral research assistant at the University of Innsbruck, working 50% at the Institute of History and European Ethnology and 50% at the Center for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies Innsbruck. My research focuses on early modern history, gender history, postcolonial studies, feminism, and the history of culture, economy, and science. Here, I examine how social conditions and structural power relations influence the scope for everyday action, how they shape it, and how they are enacted by people. In this context, individual actions, practices, and representations from a microhistorical perspective play a central role in both my research and teaching. Methodological, theoretical, and epistemological debates and the construction of knowledge are indispensable for addressing questions of gender history, and I discuss and explore these together with my students, particularly in my teaching.
After completing my studies in Modern History, Romance Studies, and Education at the University of Cologne, I worked for several years at a feminist historical society (the Cologne Women’s History Society), where I organized networking between the university, the broader landscape of historical societies, and social movements. Additionally, I prepared local historical research findings for use in guided city tours and professionalized the society’s library. In 2010, I earned my Ph.D. at the University of Kassel with a dissertation titled “Cologne’s Guild Craftswomen (1650–1750): Work and Gender” (under Heide Wunder). During this period, I served as a research assistant at the University of Cologne and the University of Barcelona, applying my theoretical perspectives on gender history. After completing my dissertation, I became a research assistant at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona) as part of an ERC grant on economic strategies during political and economic crises at the beginning of the 20th century (with Joachim Voth). In 2015, I returned to Germany and worked as a university assistant at the Chair of Early Modern History and Gender History (under Maren Lorenz). Since 2018, I held my own position funded by the DFG for my habilitation project “Geographies of Europe at the End of the Early Modern Period: Techniques of Production” until I began my position here at the University of Innsbruck in 2022.
Research Interests
- Gender history, methods, epistemologies, feminism
- Postcolonial spatial research
- Cultural studies-oriented history of economic activity
- European early modern history
- History of science, knowledge orders, history of knowledge
- Postcolonial theory and theories of empowerment studies
Publications
You can find my publications here
Activities and members
- Member and applicant in the working group Epistemologies of the Body.
- Board member of the professional association DeKolonial: https://fg-dekolonial.com/
- Member of the Working Group for Historical Women’s and Gender Studies e.V.: https://akhfg.de
Awards and Scholarships
- 2018-2023 DFG Fellowship „Eigene Stelle“ Europakarten am Ende der Frühen Neuzeit. Techniken der Herstellung.
- 2018 Fellowship from the Anna Amalia Library, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Germany
- 2017 Teaching Award for “Digital Teaching” and Best Practice from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany
- 2017 Fellowship from the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany
- 2006–2009 Doctoral Fellowship from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Germany