Prof. Dr. Susanne Schötz
Born: January 7, 1958 in Altdöbern
Faculty: Social and Economic History
Academic title: Prof. Dr.
Susanne Schötz was born in Altdöbern in Lower Lusatia. After graduating from high school, she studied History and German at the Karl Marx University of Leipzig (now the University of Leipzig) from 1976 to 1980. This was followed by research studies with Prof. Dr. Hartmut Zwahr. In 1985, she was awarded her doctorate summa cum laude with a thesis on "Urban middle classes in Leipzig during the bourgeois upheaval (1830-1870), examined on the basis of biographical mass sources".
Susanne Schötz worked as a research assistant at the University of Leipzig until 1998. She then worked at various historical institutions, including the Technical University of Chemnitz, the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the University of Leipzig and the Leipzig City History Museum. In 2004, she completed her habilitation at the University of Bielefeld with the thesis "Handelsfrauen in Leipzig. On the history of work and gender in the modern era".
Susanne Schötz taught as Chair of Social and Economic History at the TUD Dresden University of Technology from 2006-2024. She was particularly interested in linking questions of economic and social history with gender history. Her research focused on the early modern history of trade and commerce, gender history, the economic and social history of the middle classes and petty bourgeoisie in the industrial age, men and women of the revolution of 1848/49, Louise Otto-Peters and the first German women's movement as well as the history of the city of Leipzig 1815-1914. She has published extensively in these fields and worked as co-editor of the new scientific city history of Leipzig, the "Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der Stadt Leipzig", the Louise-Otto-Peters Jahrbücher, the "Dresdner Beiträge zur Geschlechterforschung in Geschichte, Kultur und Literatur" and the "Jahrbuch für Regionalgeschichte". She is an elected member of the Historical Commission of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig.
At the TUD, she held various positions in academic self-administration, most recently as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Science. Her great interest in women's and gender history led her to co-found the regional group of the New Federal States of the Working Group for Historical Women's and Gender Studies of the Federal Republic of Germany (German section of the International Federation of Research in Women's History, IFRWH) in 1993. She joined the Louise-Otto-Peters-Gesellschaft e.V. in 1994, co-founded the interdisciplinary GenderConceptGroup at TU Dresden in 2012 and has been a member of the foundation committee of the Foundation of the Archive of the German Women's Movement in Kassel and the advisory board "frauenorte sachsen" of the Landesfrauenrat Sachsen e. V. since 2015.
Her work on historical women's and gender studies and her tireless commitment to academic excellence have inspired many academics.