Martina Schmidinger studied Slavonic Studies/Czech at the University of Vienna and at Charles University in Prague. She writes her dissertation (Der deutsch-tschechische Nationalitätendiskurs im Schulwesen in den niederösterreichischen Abtretungsgebieten, 1867–1926) at the University of Innsbruck, where she has been working as university assistant in Austrian History since 2018. Her research interests range from nationalism studies to the history of science, historical border discourses, and multilingualism in the Habsburg Monarchy. Several research stays brought her, among others, to the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice for several months and to numerous other Czech as well as Austrian research institutions. In November and December she is an associated guest researcher of the NTA project in Vienna, in order to gain valuable new knowledge for her dissertation through the exchange and to use the local archives as well as libraries. During her stay, she investigates the pre-World War I Social Democratic debate on minority schooling ("territorial vs. national school"), the controversies surrounding the "Lex Kolisko", and the influence of the school associations in the Lower Austrian-Bohemian-Moravian border region (primarily the German School Association and the Komenský Association).