Viktoria Huegel, B.A. M.A. Ph.D.

Portrait photo of Viktoria Huegel.

Photo source: Marie-Louise Fischer.

Contact

Neues Institutsgebäude
Universitätsstr. 7/2nd floor
Room: D 215
1010 Vienna
E-Mail: viktoria.huegel@univie.ac.at

Office hour

After agreement

Short CV

Viktoria Huegel, BA (Heidelberg University), MA and PhD (University of Brighton) with the dissertation “From Authority to Authoritarianism and back again: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt” (supervisors: Mark Devenney, Clare Woodford; examiners: Bonnie Honig (Brown University), German Primera Villamizar (University of Brighton)). 2022-2023 research assistant at the Institute for Political Science, Heidelberg University. 2018-2022 school tutor at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology, Sussex University; 2019 visiting researcher at the Rhetorics Department, UC Berkeley.

Since October 2023, I have been a post-doctoral researcher in the ERC project “Prefiguring Democratic Futures. Cultural and Theoretical Responses to the Crisis of Political Imagination” (PI: Oliver Marchart), leading the subproject “Culture – Pre-enacting Democratic Spaces.”

Research interests

My research is driven by the concern with contemporary authoritarianism; it investigates strategies of resistance and aims to revive our democratic imagination. More specifically, I am interested in the critique of traditional political paradigms such as authority, political leadership, nationalism, and the state, that still determine theories of social transformation. 

Authority and Authoritarianism: My first book, From Authority to Authoritarianism and back again (forthcoming), develops a post-foundational concept of authority to defend democratic institutions and procedures against their undermining by new authoritarian politics. It critically examines the idea of authority in the work of Weber, Schmitt, and Arendt, drawing on post-structuralism, Black radicalism, and the philosophy of translation. 

Democratic imagination: As part of the ERC project “Prefiguring Democratic Futures”, I work with artists and activists who experiment with the occupation of public space and institutions to enact different imaginaries of democratic futures. At the moment, I am particularly interested in performative practices (rhythm, choreographed movement, sound) that expose embodied knowledge that sustains national identity and can also lend themselves to retrain how our bodies relate to each other. Together with Tanay Ghandi (Southampton University), I am co-editing a special issue on “Radical Aesthetics” (forthcoming with Krisis. Journal for contemporary philosophy.)

Rethinking the Welfare State: With Clare Woodford (University of Brighton), I lead the AHRC research network “Wellbeing State,” bringing together international researchers and policy makers to imagine and actualise welfare state politics for the 21st century. 

Political leadership: I am co-editing an edited collection, Primus inter pares? Popular leadership in theory and practice, which critically examines the figure of the leader as a constitutive aspect of populist politics and social movements.   

Publications

Editorial work

  • Forthcoming 2025. Special issue on “Radical Aesthetics,” ed. with Tanay Ghandi, with Krisis. Journal for contemporary philosophy.
  • 2024. Special issue “Toward a new imagination of revolutionary struggle. Conversations with Bonnie Honig’s A Feminist Theory of Refusal,“ ed. with Luke Edmeads, Res Publica: Revista de Historia de las Ideas Políticas 27(1).
  • 2020. Special issue “Violence and Orders,” ed. with Harrison Lechley, Interfere: Journal for Critical Thought and Radical Politics, vol.1, 2020. 

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