Since 2018 Heidrun Zettelbauer works as an Associate Professor at the Institute of History at the University of Graz with a focus on gender and cultural history. Together with Karin Schmidlechner and Karin Sonnleitner, she founded the cross-epochal research and teaching focus on gender history at the Institute of History in 2009, which she continues to coordinate. She is also head of the Austrian/Central European History department.

In 2017, she published the monograph "Sich der Nation ver|schreiben. Politiken von Geschlecht und Nation in autobiographischen Selbster-zählungen von Akteurinnen des völkischen Milieus" for "Neuere/Neueste Geschichte". In December 2017, Heidrun Zettelbauer was awarded the "Erzherzog Johann Research Prize" for this study. In 2005, H. Zettelbauer was awarded the "Hertha Firnberg Prize" by the Austrian Science Fund FWF for the research project "Gender and Germanness" (2005-2008).

Research profile
The spatial and temporal framework for Heidrun Zettelbauer's research is the 19th and 20th centuries in Central European and Austrian history, with a particular focus on cultural and gender history issues. She works on gender theory, theories of intersectionality, gender-sensitive nationalism research, individual and collective processes of nationalization, particularly in the areas of German nationalism, ethnic identities, National Socialism and the politics of the radical right. She also works on auto/biography, narratives of the self in the socio-political as well as socio-cultural contexts of modernity, the history of the body, the First World War and representations of gender and history in exhibitions and museums.

Scientific network
Member of the Austrian Society for Gender Studies, founding member and co-director of the Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Graz (2005-2008), reviewer for the journal Geschichte und Region / Storia e regione (2015), "qualified expert" in review procedures for the Tyrolean Science Fund (2018), the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (BMWFW, Department V/7) (since 2016) and the Jubilee Fund of the OeNB (2013).