Dr Maja Lorbek is an architectural historian and architect currently affiliated with TU Wien. From 2020 to 2025 she served as principal investigator of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) project Transnational School Architecture, hosted at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She earned her PhD in Architecture with distinction from TU Wien in 2014, following diploma studies in architecture at Graz University of Technology.
Her academic positions have been held primarily at TU Wien, where she has worked in the Department of Housing and Design and at the Research Unit of Integrated Planning and Industrial Building in various research and teaching capacities since 2008. From 2015 to 2017 she also held a postdoctoral research position at the Leibniz Institute for Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) in Dresden. In 2024, she was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana.
She is the author of Schulen weiterbauen. Strategische Entwicklung von Schulgebäudebeständen (Transcript Verlag, 2020) and has published widely in journals such as Architectural Histories, The Journal of Design History, Raumforschung und Raumordnung, Urbani izziv, and Techne Journal. She has presented her research at major international conferences, including the European Architectural History Network in Madrid in 2022 and the International Standing Conference for the History of Education in Budapest in 2023.
Before her academic career, Dr Lorbek worked as a practicing architect in Vienna, specializing in the renovation and adaptation of existing buildings, including listed schools. This professional background continues to shape her research on the intersections of educational infrastructure, architectural innovation, and postwar internationalism.