Birgit Sauer

Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Vienna

Birgit Sauer is Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Vienna. From 2018 to 2022, she served as Deputy Speaker of the research platform “GAIN – Gender: Ambivalent In_Visibilities.”

Her research interests include right-wing populism and gender, migration and gender, feminist state theory, and the politics of emotions and affects. She has participated in several EU-funded research projects addressing topics such as right-wing populism and the media, gender and right-wing populism, violence against women, and the intersections of gender, migration, and religion. She has also conducted research on the affective transformation of the state.

Among her recent publications is, together with Otto Penz, *Governing Affects: Neoliberalism, Neo-Bureaucracies, and Service Work* (Routledge, 2020). The book theorises the role of affect in the transformation of the state and explores governing through affects in Austrian and German state administrations.

Her most recent book, also co-authored with Otto Penz, is *Konjunktur der Männlichkeit. Affektive Strategien der autoritären Rechten* (Campus, 2023), which explores the affectivity of “masculinist identity politics” among authoritarian right-wing parties and movements in Austria and Germany.