Waltraud Kofler

INFO

Free University of Bozen

Art Historian and Heritage Expert

Platform Cultural Heritage Cultural Production - Director

ORCID

Platform Cultural Heritage Cultural Production

The Platform Cultural Heritage Cultural Production of the Faculty of Design and Art, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, promotes an interdisciplinary discussion on the practices of cultural heritage as cultural production, interweaving the many diverse research approaches that draw on art studies, socio-cultural sciences (anthropology, cultural geography, and sociology), history, architecture, art and design.
The aim of the platform is to develop research, conservation, mediation and further development of the cultural heritage in the European region/EUREGIO Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino, including social participation.

BIO

Waltraud Kofler Engl (1959) studied art history and history at the Universities of Innsbruck and Florence. She received her doctorate in 1985. After teaching art history, she worked from 1986 as an inspector of the Monuments Office of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, South Tyrol and since 1994 as a director. During this time, she not only dealt intensively with the restoration, conservation and conversion of architectural and artistic monuments, but also with issues of cultural heritage education and mediation in the form of conferences, lectures, guided tours, radio broadcasts and publications. Since September 2018, she has been director of the newly established Cultural Heritage Cultural Production Platform at the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano.
Her publications deal with the history, reception and restoration of buildings and works of art in Tyrol, medieval murals, historical gardens and the uncomfortable heritage of fascist architecture and art in Bolzano. Her current research focuses on architecture and art of the interwar period and fascism, testimonies of the First World War and the militarization of the landscape (Ortles and Dolomites fronts, bunkers, Vallo Alpino), conflicts and uncomfortable cultural heritage as well as historical gardens. Head (PI) of the research project "Written in the Landscape. Places, Traces, Memories. The First World War in the Sesto Dolomites". 2022 Guest professor at the University of Innsbruck. Member of the Working Group for Theory and Teaching of Monument Conservation in Germany and of ICOMOS Germany.