Gerda Lechleitner [Project Partner]
Gerda Lechleitner studied musicology and psychology and gained her doctorate at the Vienna University. Since 1996, she had been working in the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; she had been curator of the historical collections; together with Christian Liebl she had been editor of the CD-edition “Sound Documents from the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The Complete Historical Collections 1899-1950” and the Yearbook of the Phonogrammarchiv “International Forum on Audio-Visual Research”. She had retired in July 2020.
Her research interests have started by dealing with the intellectual history around 1900; due to her position in the world’s first research sound archive she not only focused on the history of the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna but also, more generally, in the history and development of audiovisual archives; she has been interested in the significance of (acoustic) historical sources, as well as in the formation and interpretation of (collected and preserved) sources discussed from different points of view.
She had been involved in various international projects, the latest has been: “Preservation and Transmission of Africa’s Collective Memory – African Testimonies and Oral Literature in Early Colonial History” (Fondation AfricAvenir International; Univ.-Prof. DDr. Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III.
She still is active in ICTM: as co-chair of the Study Group on Historical Sources and as member of the RILM Commission Mixte.