Zurück

Univ.-Ass^.in Dr^.in phil. BA. MA Freda Fiala

University assistant

Freda Fiala is a Post-Doctoral researcher in the ERC project OLFAC (Olfactormativity: Exploring The Intervening Performativity Of Smell) and joined the department in this role in 2024.

FIELDS OF RESEARCH

Cultural Studies
Taiwan Studies
Critical Curatorial and Museum Studies
Sensory Studies and Olfactory Methodologies
Transmodern Artistic Networks and Cultural Diplomacy
Infrastructural Critique

SHORT BIOGRAPHY

Freda's academic journey bridges Theater, Film, and Media and East Asian Studies (Sinology), developed through study periods in Vienna, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Her P.h.D., funded by a DOC grant from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, explored contemporary performance in Taiwan through its institutional networks, curatorial strategies, and cultural-political implications. The study is forthcoming in 2026 as an English-language monograph and offers a sustained analysis of performance as a site of cultural negotiation and informal cultural diplomacy.

Her current research expands this work into the field of museum studies, with a focus on sensory regimes, infrastructure, and the politics of display. Within OLFAC, she investigates olfaction as a curatorial and epistemic tool, tracing how smell operates across transregional knowledge histories, archives and institutional contexts.

Freda has been a guest lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Vienna and a theory mentor at the P.A.R.T.S. School for Contemporary Dance in Brussels. She has co-curated several symposia, among them ”Performance Besides Itself. Infra- and Parastructures of a Contemporary Liveness” (with Kunstraum Niederoesterreich) and ”Ambivalent Orders” as well as ”Curatorial Tipping Points” (with the Austrian Association of Curators). In 2025, Freda was awarded the Young Scholars Award of the European Association of Taiwan Studies (EATS) and the inaugural Doc School Award of the University of Vienna (Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies).

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECT

2024-2029 OLFAC Olfactormativity - Exploring the Intervening Performativity of Smell (ERC Consolidator Project)

Project Team:
Prof. Dr. Silke Felber (PI)
Dr. Freda Fiala (Postdoctoral Researcher)
Dr. Julia Ostwald (Postdoctoral Researcher)
Antonia Karácsonyi LL.B. (Project and Office Management)

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Fiala, Freda (forthcoming, 2025): ”Empty Stages, Crowded Studios, Networked Bodies: ADAM’s Pacific Perspectives on Contemporary Performance,” in The Routledge Companion to Performance, eds. O’Connor, Lucian; Ovejero Postigo, Graciela; Loveless, Natalie; Klein, Jennie (New York: Routledge).

Fiala, Freda (2024): “The Taipei Performing Arts Center and the Bauhaus – The Visceral Economy of “Avant-Garde,” in Curatography. The Study of Curatorial Culture, ISSUE 13 The Economy of Curation and the Capital of Attention. (English/Chinese)

Fiala, Freda (2024), ”Performance ohne Protest. Freda Fiala über ‘UNBOUND: PERFORMANCE AS RUPTURE’ in der Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin,” in TEXTE ZUR KUNST.

Fiala, Freda; Lin, River; Weidinger, Alfred (eds.) (2023): The Non-fungible Body?Performance and Digitalisation (Berlin: DISTANZ).

Fiala, Freda (2022): ”Thinking borders, oceanically. On The Past is a Foreign Country by Michikazu Matsune and Jun Yang,” in Networked Bodies: The Culture and Ecosystem of Contemporary Performance, ed. Lin, River (Taipei: Taipei Performing Arts Center). (English/Chinese), 169–177.

Fiala, Freda (2022), ”Performance on the Blockchain: Zhang Huan and EchoX,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 45 (3 (135)): 24–34.

Please find a list of all publications here.