Dr. Freda Fiala is a writer, researcher and curator focusing on performance-based artistic practices. Her academic journey bridges Theater, Film, and Media and East Asian Studies (Sinology), developed through study periods in Vienna, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Her P.h.D., funded by a DOC grant from the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2020–2023), explored contemporary performance in Taiwan through its networks and cultural-political implications. Titled Curating Communities, Staging Liveness: Contemporary Performance in Taiwan’s Quest for Identity, it is set to be published in 2025 as the first English monograph on contemporary performance and its role in informal cultural diplomacy in the Taiwanese context.

Freda’s research is guided by questions of decentralisation and the concept of the peripheral in both macro- and micro-historical frameworks. Her work, mostly in performance studies, curatorial and museum studies centers on the regions of Western Europe and East Asia. Her practice critically incorporates unlearning as an integral mode of learning, probing the influence of cultural infrastructures on modes of the artistic and institutional, and exploring aesthetics in pluridisciplinary dynamics.

Freda has been a guest lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Vienna and a theory mentor at the P.A.R.T.S. School for Contemporary Dance in Brussels. Her curatorial work includes developing performance formats for museum spaces, such as The Non-fungible Body? and HYBRID BODIES at OK Linz, as well as co-curating symposia (Performance Besides Itself. Infra- and Parastructures of a Contemporary Liveness with Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, Curatorial Tipping Points with the Austrian Association of Curators, Salzburger Kunstverein and Museum der Moderne Salzburg).

She is board member of AAC (Austrian Association of Curators) and board member of the Anti-Racism Committee of the Association for Asian Performance. Her writing has been published by DISTANZ Verlag Berlin, PAJ / MIT Press, TEXTE ZUR KUNST, ARTMargins, TQW Magazine, Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Taipei Performing Arts Center, among others. She was awarded the 'Literaturförderpreis' of the city of Graz in 2020 and the RotAhorn-Preis in 2021, and was writer-in-residency at the Literarisches Kolloquium in Berlin in 2023.