Alice Königstetter

Alice Königstetter is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Near Eastern Studies at the University of Vienna (under supervision of Prof. Stephan Prochazka), where she writes her thesis on marginalized communities in contemporary women’s fiction from Kuwait. For her visiting research stay (March 2023 – February 2024) at the VUB, she has been awarded a Marietta Blau Fellowship by the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research. Prior to that, she was awarded a grant by the University of Vienna to conduct research in Kuwait in summer 2022, where she was affiliated with the Centre Français de Recherche de la Péninsule Arabique. Alice holds a MA in Arabic and Islamic Studies, as well as a Master in European Studies from the University of Vienna. In 2022, she presented her research at conferences of the Nordic Society for Middle Eastern Studies in Reykjavik, Iceland; at the “Post-Millennial MENAWA: New Approaches to Literature, Translation, and Creative Expression“ conference and at the Sectarianism, Proxies & De-Sectarianisation Conference, both organized by the University of Lancaster, UK. Her peer-reviewed publication on Anglophone women’s writing from the Arab Gulf is to be included into the forthcoming anthology Gulf Women’s Lives: Voice, Space, Place and published by Exeter University Press.

Prior to pursuing her PhD, she worked in Conference Services at the Organization for Security and Co-operation as well as in the External Relations Office at the International Dialogue Centre in Vienna. Alice also actively engages in initiatives that foster interfaith and intercultural dialogue, such as most recently as a volunteer for the Center for European-Arab and Islamic-Christian Studies.