Miriam Althammer

Univ.-Ass. Dr. Miriam Althammer
University Associate (Postdoc)

Universität Salzburg, Unipark Nonntal
Raum 2.128, Erzabt-Klotz-Straße 1, 5020 Salzburg

Tel.: +43 662 8044 – 4665
E-Mail:

Research Interests

  • Dance and Archive (Archive as Practice)
  • Oral History and Memory Culture
  • Artistic Research, Embodied Knowledge and Eco-Somatics
  • Body Politics: Dance and Performance in Society
  • Staging Gender in Dance and Performance
  • Notations, Scores, and (digital) Documentation of Dance and the Performing Arts

 

Academic Functions

  • Core Member, International Forum for Eco‑Embodied Arts ( IFEEA): Member of the international stewardship and research team; contributing to the development of transdisciplinary approaches to somatic practices, artistic research, and ecologically oriented body- and knowledge practices.
  • Network Convenor, CEEPUS network  Arts in Motion: Coordinating the transnational academic network dedicated to the advancement of teaching, research, and student mobility in the fields of dance and performance, with a particular focus on the intersection of practice and theory.
  • Editorial Board Member,  Dance Context Journal
  • Co-editor of the journal  Tanz&Archiv: ForschungsReisen
  • General Secretary of the Association of Friends of the Derra de Moroda Dance Archives and Dance Studies/Salzburg

 

Biography

Miriam Althammer is a dance and performance studies scholar, author, and curator. Since 2023, she has been conducting research and teaching as a University Assistant (Postdoc) in the Department of Music and Dance Studies. She studied Theatre and Dance Studies, Art History, and Modern German Literature in Munich and Bern and completed the postgraduate programme Curating in the Performing Arts in Berlin and Salzburg. She previously worked as a research associate at the Chair of Theatre Studies at the University of Bayreuth and at the Centre for Contemporary Dance at the University of Music and Dance Cologne. For many years, she also taught at the Dance Theatre Institute in Bytom, part of the Theatre Academy in Kraków, at the  Academy of Dance and Performance of the National Dance Center in Bucharest, the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, and the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. In both her teaching and research, she combines historiographical and epistemological approaches with artistic practice and embodied methodologies.

At the centre of her work is the question of how dance history is written and canonised when its subject matter survives primarily through ephemeral bodily, movement, and everyday practices. Taking Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe as her point of departure, she challenges Western-centred genealogies of dance and instead focuses on transnational networks and historiographical gaps. Her doctoral dissertation, Szenarien des Übergangs (Rombach Wissenschaft, 2024), examined the transformations of contemporary dance in post-socialist Southeastern Europe. Drawing on approximately fifty oral history interviews, she analysed how artistic works reflect political upheavals and how oral history functions simultaneously as a historical source and a critical performative method.

Her current research project, BODY MAPS, builds on this work by tracing the circulation of embodied knowledge and of reform and gymnastics movements since the early twentieth century. Through the biographies of female dancers, educators, and theorists (including figures associated with Loheland, Floria Capsali, Vera Proca Ciortea, Maga Magazinović, and Hilde Holger), she investigates how ideas of health, gender, and the environment became inscribed in bodies or were renegotiated through migration and political upheaval. A further focus of her work lies in critical approaches to archives and in connecting historiographical questions with contemporary debates on ecology, somatics, and care.

Alongside her academic work, she contributes to projects through curatorial and artistic research, including Performing the Memories | Unearthing Histories | Scoring Transtemporalities, developed as part of  SCORES – Zwischen Dokumentation, Vermittlung und Kreation, 2021-2023, and RELIEF, 2026–2027. She has worked as a journalist for publications including the Süddeutsche Zeitung, tanz magazine, and Münchner Feuilleton, and as a blogger for various festivals and theatres. She was also a member of the editorial team of the online magazine   tanznetz.de for fifteen years. Since 2018, she has served on the jury for independent dance artists at the Department of Arts and Culture of the City of Munich. Most recently, she co-organised the Society for Dance Research’s symposium  (In-)Visibilities – Moderner Tanz Re-Visited, held at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen 2024.

 

Publications | Lectures | Artistic-Curatorial Activities  Pure

 

Memberships

  •  Elite Network of Bavaria
  • Mentee in the career development programme of the Universities of Linz, Salzburg, and Krems (2024-2025)
  • GTF – Society for Dance Research (member of the working group Modern Dance)
  • DSA – Dance Studies Association 
  • GTW – Society for Theatre Studies (member of the working group Archives)
  • IFTR – International Federation for Theatre Research (member of the working group Choreography and Corporeality)
  • EADH – The European Association for Dance History
  • GKFD – Society for Artistic Research
  • SIBMAS – International Association of Libraries, Museums, Archives and Documentation Centres of the Performing Arts

 

Awards and Scholarships

  • Scholarship holder of the Max Weber Programme of the Free State of Bavaria for the promotion of highly gifted students according to the Bavarian Elite Promotion Act (2009-2012)
  • Grant from the program of the Department of Art Studies (2012–2013)
  • Marie Andeßner Scholarship of the gend-up programme of the University of Salzburg (2015-2016)
  • Graduate Student Travel Award of the Dance Studies Association (2018)
  • Nomination for the Excellence in Teaching Award from the University of Salzburg (2025)