Applications are evaluated by a transatlantic advisory board, comprised of Fatima Naqvi (Rutgers University), Michael Orthofer (The Literary Saloon), Daniela Strigl (University of Vienna), Martin Rauchbauer (Director, Deutsches Haus at NYU), Hannah Liko (Deputy Director, ACFNY), and Andreas Stadler (Director, ACFNY).
Hannah Liko studied Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at the University “Federico II”, Naples, Italy, and the University of Vienna, where she received her PhD. She later studied international relations at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. She worked as an archaeologist at the University of Vienna, for the Austrian Archaeological Institute and the Austrian Academy of Science doing research in Velia (Elea), Italy, and Ephesos, Turkey. She joined the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 2004, working at the Department for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, and later the Department for South Eastern Europe. 2006 - 2010 she served at the Austrian Mission to the United Nations in New York working on economic and social issues, and on political developments in Africa during Austria’s Membership in the UN Security Council 2009 – 2010. Hannah Liko has been the Deputy Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York since 2011.
Sigrid Löffler studied English, German, Philosophy, and Pedagogy in Vienna. Since she began in 1968, Sigrid Löffler has become one of Austria’s most eminent journalists: she was an editor at the daily Austrian newspaper “Die Presse” until 1972, and then took on the position of head of the arts and entertainment department of the Austrian news magazine “Profil” until 1993. Löffler then worked as a freelance publicist and critic for German and Swiss newspapers, news magazines and broadcasting services and as a long-time culture correspondent of “Süddeutsche Zeitung”. From 1996 to 1999 Sigrid Löffler served as the head of features section of the Hamburg weekly paper “Die Zeit”. 1997 to 2000 she was a panelist on the critically acclaimed German literary TV-show “Das Literarische Quartett”. Löffler is also a frequent lecturer at U.S., German and Austrian universities such as Georgetown, Columbia University, Boston University, Göttingen University, Bochum University, and the University of Vienna. She was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Cultural Journalism in 1992, and the Journalism Award of the City of Vienna in 2001. Sigrid Löffler is married and lives in Berlin.
Fatima Naqvi is associate professor in the department of Germanic, Russian and East European Languages and Literatures at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. She teaches courses on Vienna 1900, as well as on post-war German and Austrian literature and film. After her B.A. from Dartmouth College, she received her Ph.D. in German literature from Harvard University in 2000. In 2006, she edited an issue of Modern Austrian Literature devoted to Elfriede Jelinek. She has also written articles on Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý, Elfriede Jelinek’s variant of post-drama, film adaptation as melancholic translation (Michael Haneke and Ingeborg Bachmann), history and cosmology in Christoph Ransmayr’s prose and Anselm Kiefer’s works, the aesthetics of violence in Michael Haneke’s films, as well as dilettantism in Thomas Bernhard’s novel Old Masters. She has also published on Bernhard’s controversial play Heldenplatz and its discourse of victimhood, El Greco’s influence on Rilke’s poetry, laughter as a means of social action in Roberto Benigni’s La vita è bella, and Catholicism’s continuing presence in contemporary Austrian writing.
Michael Orthofer was born in Graz, Austria in 1964. He received his B.A. at the Brown University, 1982-1985 and studied International and Comparative Law at the Columbia Unversity. He currently lives in New York. Michael Orthofer is the founder and managing editor of the Complete Review and its Literary Saloon blog, a leading online resource for information about international literature.
Martin Rauchbauer studied German Studies and philosophy at the University of Vienna and international relations at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna and Washington D.C. He worked as a journalist for Austrian Radio and Television (ORF) and the news magazine Format before joining the Austrian Foreign Ministry (now the Austrian Ministry for European and International Affairs) in 2000. From 2007 to 2010 he served as the Deputy Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York City. Before that he was the Director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Mexico City, a defense analyst in the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He served as the Chairman of the Academic Forum for Foreign Affairs (AFA), Vienna, where he organized the Vienna International Model United Nations (VIMUN) 1996-1997. Martin Rauchbauer is the current director of Deutsches Haus at NYU.
Andreas Stadler studied political science at the University of Vienna in Austria, and at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. After graduation he joined the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs of Austria as a diplomat. From 1995 to 1999 he served as Deputy Ambassador in Zagreb, Croatia and from 1999 to 2004 he was the director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in Warsaw, Poland. After leaving Warsaw in 2004 he became the advisor for science, arts and culture to the President of the Republic of Austria and held the position until 2007, when he was appointed director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York.
Daniela Strigl was born in Vienna in 1964. She studied German, history, philosophy and dramaturgy in Vienna. She works as an essayist and literary critic. From 1992 to 1994, she was responsible for the Walter Buchebner Gesellschaft's literary program at Kunsthaus Mürzzuschlag. From 1995 to 1998, she was editor-in-chief at the arts magazine was. Between 1996 and 2001, she was a co-organiser of the Literatur im März festival in Vienna. From 2003 to 2008, she was on the panel of judges for the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, in 2009 for the German Book Prize. She was Scholar in Residence at Rutgers University, New Jersey, in 2005 and since 2007, she has taught at Vienna University's Institute of German Studies. Daniela Strigl was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Literary Criticism in 2001, and the Max Kade Essay Prize in 2006.
