Botstiber Visiting Professorship

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The UC Berkeley Austrian Studies Program welcomes applications for the 2025 Botstiber Visiting Professorship

The Austrian Studies Program at the UC Berkeley Institute of European Studies is pleased to welcome faculty applications for the position of Visiting Professor, to teach the newly created Botstiber Compact Seminar in Austrian Studies, established with the generous support of The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies (BIAAS). 

The next Botstiber Compact Seminar in Austrian Studies at UC Berkeley will be offered at the beginning of the Spring 2025 semester (5 weeks, starting January 21, 2025, ending February 25, 2025).

We invite seminar topics related to Austrian literature, history, or culture, in the broadest sense. Interdisciplinary approaches and themes are encouraged.

Eligibility: Any associate or full professor with a permanent teaching position in the Humanities or Social Sciences and with expertise in Austrian Studies. The Visiting Professorship is also open to professors from universities outside of Austria.

Details: The compact seminar is an official UC Berkeley course, offered for credit (2 units) through the UC Berkeley Department of German, to advanced undergraduates from all UC Berkeley departments. The course will be taught in English, with all reading materials in English, and will take place over 5 weeks, with three hours of instruction per week, plus office hours for meeting with students. All classes are in person. Selected professors are expected to remain in Berkeley for the entire 5 week teaching period. 

UC Berkeley is a premier university, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Visiting Professor is required to be physically present in the Berkeley area for the duration of the course and may be asked to teach the compact seminar in the German language. The Visiting Professor will receive a salary of $12,000 to cover teaching, travel, and accommodation costs.  The salary will be subject to both California state and United States federal taxes, in accordance with the UC Berkeley employment and payroll practices. Visiting professors must organize their own travel, accommodation, and health insurance coverage during their stay at Berkeley. The visa application and hiring process will be coordinated by the UC Berkeley Department of German, where the visiting professor will be based.

During their stay, the selected Visiting Professor will also give a public lecture—the “Botstiber Lecture”—at the Institute of European Studies. In accordance with the mission of The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies (BIAAS), the public lecture should refer to the historic relationship between the United States and Austria, including lands of the former Habsburg Empire.

Application Instructions: Applicants must submit the following materials (in English):

  • a CV (max 2 pages)
  • a course description and syllabus with weekly course content and bibliography (max 2 pages)
  • a brief description of up to three possible topics for the Botstiber Lecture (max 1 page)

Please submit application materials as a single PDF file to the Austrian Studies Program Director Jeroen Dewulf: jdewulf@berkeley.edu

Deadline: May 31, 2024

Proposals will be evaluated by a board composed of UC Berkeley faculty that will announce the selected candidate by June 30, 2024. The board will include a representative of The Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies (BIAAS) in the discussion on the topic to be chosen for the Botstiber lecture.

For further information, please contact Jeroen Dewulf at jdewulf@berkeley.edu

2024 Botstiber Visiting Professor Benedikt C. Harzl (Univ. of Graz)

Benedikt Harzl

The Austrian Studies Program is delighted to announce the appointment of Associate Professor Dr. Benedikt C. Harzl from the University of Graz as the Botstiber Visiting Professor for the year 2024. Professor Harzl will be teaching a UC Berkeley Botstiber Compact Seminar in Austrian Studies titled "The Russia-Ukraine Conflict in European Perspective(s), Austrian and Central European History, Politics, and Law”.

This course goes beyond the current Russian aggression against Ukraine and explores issues pertaining to profound legal, political and historical aspects underlying the conflict. It will employ interdisciplinary approaches to trace the origins of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Drawing on the concept of shared history and the various influences the Habsburg Empire have exercised on identity and nation-building, the course will also probe into how historical narratives have been deliberately designed to justify encroachments upon the very sovereignty of the Ukrainian state.

Associate Professor Dr. Benedikt C. Harzl is based at the Centre for East European Law and Eurasian Studies and the Insitute of International Law of the Law School of the University of Graz. He is General Editor of the journal Review of Central and East European Law and the book series Law in Eastern Europe (Brill Nijhoff). He graduated in Law at the University in Graz and completed the “East European Studies” MA program at the Free University of Berlin in 2010. After working at the Institute for European Studies in Minsk and the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin he was a researcher at the European Academy in Bolzano/Bozen (2007–2012) and worked as a university researcher at the REEES Centre between 2012 and 2016. He completed his PhD in law at the University of Frankfurt and was based at Johns Hopkins University between 2016 and 2017 as a Marshall Plan Foundation Fellow. He held guest professorships at Rutgers University in New Jersey (August/September 2023) and New Vision University (Tbilisi, Georgia) in May-June 2023. His habilitation thesis examined matters pertaining to international law in the post-Soviet space. He is co-editor of Unrecognized Entities: Perspectives in International, European and Constitutional Law (Brill Nijhoff, 2022) as well as Diversity Management in Russia (Routledge, 2013).