“Being black and Austrian is not a contradiction - it's the simultaneity that defines it."

Vanessa Spanbauer and Katharina Oke on Black Austrian history and historiography

Abstract

Vanessa Spanbauer and Katharina Oke both work with and in different institutional contexts on Black history and the history of Africa. In the following excerpt from a conversation the two had in June 2023 via Zoom between Vienna and Lagos, they reflect on historiographical working methods, working contexts and strategies that make their work possible and shape it.