Sandra Mayer

... is a literary and cultural historian in the research unit Literary&Textual Studies and has a particular interest in the contexts and conditions of literary production and reception. Her expertise lies in the areas of life writing, authorship studies, cultural transfer, and reception studies. After holding academic positions and research fellowships at the Universities of Vienna, Oxford, Zurich, and Galway, Sandra joined the ACDH-CH in August 2021. She is principal investigator on a three-year project that will result in a digital edition of the Auden Musulin Papers: previously inaccessable literary papers and correspondence by the British-American poet W. H. Auden sent to the Welsh-Austrian writer Stella Musulin.

As an Elise Richter Fellow, Sandra is also project lead of “The Author as Activist: Literature, Politics, and Celebrity” (2022-2026), which explores the interplay of literary authorship, political activism, media, and celebrity in and through autobiographical narrative from the nineteenth century to the present day.

Sandra studied English and History at the universities of Graz, Sussex, and Vienna, where she received her doctorate in English Literature for a thesis on the reception of Oscar Wilde’s works on twentieth-century Viennese stages.

Publications | Publications (Before ACDH)