Massive protest demonstrations against war and nuclear weapons shook Europe in the early 1980s. The protesters rallied in NATO Member States, in neutral countries (e.g., Austria, Switzerland, Finland) and one Member State of the Warsaw Pact (East Germany). These anti-war movements are often seen as a by-product of the last major crisis of the Cold War or as an extension of superpower politics. Taking a different perspective, this project explores anti-war protest from below and focuses on the experiences of the protesters.

Currently I conduct interviews with peace activists, in cooperation with the oral history project MenschenLeben hosted by the Österreichische Mediathek. The interviews take a personal history approach and follow the methodological framework developed by Gerhard Jagschitz.