Vanessa Blaha

Vanessa Blaha
Project assistant

University of Salzburg, Department of Educational Science, Working Group Social Pedagogy
Erzabt-Klotz-Straße 1, room 2.240, 5020 Salzburg

Tel.: +43 (0) 662 8044-4203
E-Mail:

Short CV

Vanessa Blaha began her academic career in 2017 as a student assistant at the Department of Educational Science at the University of Salzburg under Birgit Bütow. In 2019, she successfully completed her Master’s degree at the same university, specialising in social pedagogy. Since graduating, Vanessa Blaha has worked as a project collaborator on various research projects dealing with current and historical topics related to child and youth welfare, in particular its interfaces with psychiatry, leaving care and gender. Her current research project is the ‘Scientific reappraisal of incidents of violence at the Josef Rehrl School in Salzburg’. Vanessa Blaha has been enrolled in a doctoral programme since 2020 and is devoting her dissertation to ‘State intervention policies using the example of Salzburg oral files in the period from 1945 to 1970 with a focus on femininity and sexuality’.

Main research areas

  • Social pedagogy
  • Historical-systematic aspects of child and youth welfare and the border area of child and youth psychiatry
  • (Inpatient) child and youth welfare & leaving care
  • Gender research with a focus on femininity and sexuality
  • Qualitative-reconstructive research methods

Research projects

Publications/presentations (selection)

  • Bütow, B., Blaha, V. & Steinberger D. (2024). Oral records as an analytical approach to the historiographical reconstruction of gender dimensions in youth welfare. In C. Antenhofer & U. Leitner (eds.),Gender and Materiality. Historical perspectives on upbringing, education and socialisation from antiquity to the present. Innsbruck: transcript.
  • Bütow, B., Blaha, V. & Steinberger, D. (2023). Developments in child and youth welfare and child and youth welfare in the (tense) relationship to curative education and child and adolescent psychiatry in the province of Salzburg. Research report: University of Salzburg.
  • Blaha, V. & Holztrattner, M. (2023). Engagement in socio-educational residential groups. A critical view from the recipient’s perspective. In A. Heimgartner, K. Lauermann, A. Pirs, H. Reicher & E. Stuhlpfarrer (Eds.), Kritik und Engagement in der Sozialen Arbeit. Publication series of the ÖFEB Section Social Pedagogy. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Barbara Budrich.
  • 24.02.2024: AG Historische Sozialpädagogik/Soziale Arbeit – Geschlechterdimensionen in Geschichte und Geschichtsforschung (zu) Sozialer Arbeit; Lecture: ‘Staatliche Eingriffspolitiken am Beispiel von Salzburger Mündelakten im Zeitraum von 1945 – 1970 mit Fokus auf Weiblichkeit und Sexualität (Qualifikationsarbeit)’
  • 09.2023: ÖFEB Section Conference on Social Pedagogy (University of Klagenfurt); lecture: ‘[…] so that children and young people find the right path in life […]’1 – Salzburg’s child and youth welfare in the area of tension between inclusion and exclusion in the period from 1945-1975.” (with Daniela Steinberger)
  • 12.2022: Guest lecture University of Zurich, Institute of Educational Science (Historical Educational Research and Control of the Education System); lecture: ‘Developments in child and youth welfare in the province of Salzburg from 1945 to 1975 – Historiographical reconstruction of gender dimensions based on selected oral records’ (with Daniela Steinberger)
  • 05-20 May 2022: HAW Hamburg – History conference ‘Die bewegten/bewegenden Jahre…’; contribution to a panel: ‘Instinkthafte, sanfte Mütterlichkeit als universelles Erziehungsmittel’ – das System Pflegefamilie in Österreich’ (with Daniela Steinberger)