DS of Philological and Cultural Studies
Research Excellence in the Heart of Europe
The Vienna PhilKult Doctoral School is the largest PhD programme at the University of Vienna and is embedded within one of the world’s leading centres for humanities research: the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies. Bringing together 18 institutes and the Centre for Translation Studies, the School provides an exceptionally rich and specialised academic environment that encourages intellectual curiosity and interdisciplinary exploration.
A Distinctive Structure: Twelve Thematic Sections
At the core of the PhilKult Doctoral School lies its unique division into twelve autonomous sections, reflecting the remarkable breadth and diversity of the faculty. This structure ensures that doctoral candidates receive expert, discipline-specific supervision from leading scholars while benefitting from sustained interdisciplinary dialogue across institutional boundaries. Organised into dynamic clusters spanning cultural and area studies, translation studies, linguistics and literature, the School’s research spectrum ranges from Digital Humanities and Global Entanglements to Theoretical and Comparative Linguistics, Manuscript Cultures as well as Musicology, Theatre, and Translation Studies.
Supportive Environment & Academic Community
PhilKult views itself as an inclusive and vibrant academic community that supports all doctoral candidates within the faculty. The school offers a comprehensive set of resources designed to promote scholarly development:
- Financial Support: Generous funding opportunities include travel grants for conferences and archival research, completion scholarships for the final phase of the doctorate, mobility scholarships for research stays abroad, and targeted publication support.
- Active Participation: Doctoral candidates are fully integrated into innovative research environments and play an active role in shaping the school’s academic life by participating in—and in many cases organising—workshops, conferences, and other scholarly events.
- International Network: An internationally distinguished Scientific Advisory Board, composed of leading experts from across Europe, provides strategic guidance and fosters strong international connections for emerging scholars.
Become part of a dynamic intellectual community in Vienna and contribute to shaping the future of the humanities within one of the most distinguished faculties for cultural, linguistic, literary and translation studies.
Application language: Applications to this doctoral school may be submitted in English or German.
Update: The application deadline was 2 March, 14:00 CET.
You can still access your submitted application via the Application Portal.
Please do not inquire about the status of your application. All candidates will be informed of the outcome of the selection process as soon as possible.
Supervisor / Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Homer, Hesiod, Early Greek Epic
Comparisons of archaic Greek poetry and Ancient Near Eastern poetry and myth (especially Sumerian and Akkadian)
Comparative Poetics, Mythology, and Religion in the Ancient World
Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry; Textual Criticism; History of the Ancient Greek Language.
Weblink for further information:
https://klassischephilologie.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/mitarbeiterinnen/graezistik/bernardo-ballesteros-petrella/#c1107835
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Languages and speaker communities represent evolving systems. The focus of my research is on analyzing and modeling dynamics within such systems, subsuming dynamics within a language (e.g., lexical and semantic change) as well as interactions among languages (e.g., competition between languages). The aim is to learn about the cognitive, social, cultural, technological, and environmental factors driving linguistic diversity, variation, and change. The emerging field of digital linguistics naturally covers these research interests: I approach linguistic research questions with digital data and methods, and I am interested in the role that digitalization plays in the evolution of language. I supervise projects involving quantitative and computational approaches in the study of language variation and change, employing methods from disciplines such as data science, corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and mathematical modeling of population dynamics.
Weblink for further information: https://digiling.univie.ac.at/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Linguistics (Theoretical linguistics, comparative linguistics, sociolinguistics, diaspora linguistics)
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
African Studies (African linguistics, Africa - China relations, Africa - Europe relations, Global African diaspora studies, global area studies)
Weblink for further information: https://homepag.univie.ac.at/adamsbodomo
Email: adams.bodomo(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
film and media studies, gender theory, queer cinema, Austrian cinema and media history, media narratology, feminist epistemology and theory, artistic research (studies)
Weblink for further information: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1485-7705
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
I welcome PhD proposals that engage critically and historically with music and musical practices across European and North American contexts, with particular interest in the English- and German-speaking regions.
AREAS:
- European and North American art music (c. 1850–2000)
- Popular music from 1945 to the present (especially UK/US)
- Music and image: film and television music, music videos, video game audio, and music in advertising
- Music and musical practices in the digital era (streaming, social media, algorithmic curation and recommendation, online communities, participatory/creator cultures, AI-assisted production, livestreamed performances)
APPROACHES:
- Historical musicology, critical musicology, music analysis
- Cultural studies, environmental humanities and ecocriticism, philosophy
- Interdisciplinary projects welcome
CROSS-CUTTING THEMES:
- Politics, society, technology (including digital technology), posthumanism, ecological crisis, aesthetics, ethics, value
Weblink for further information: https://musikwissenschaft.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/team/institut/brooks/
Email: Marc.Brooks(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
formal semantics
formal pragmatics
intonation
interfaces of syntax, semantics, pragmatics and prosody
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
meaning of temporal connectors
meaning of tenses
tenseless languages
temporal adverbs and quantifiers
aspect
elements that don't change truth conditions, e.g...
discourse particles like German "ja", "doch" etc. in any language
focus and/or contrastive topic in any language
mapping of syntax and information structure to prosody
Weblink for further information: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/daniel.buring/
Email: daniel.buring(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
-Ancient philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle
-Ancient epistemology, psychology and aesthetics
-The educational programme of the Artes Liberales
Weblink for further information: https://klassischephilologie.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/mitarbeiterinnen/graezistik/stefan-buettner/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
History of Western Music since 1600; Opera Studies; Nineteenth-Century Concert Music; Vienna as a Musical Center; Transnational Music Studies; Transnational Musical Relationships in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries; Franz Liszt and Piano Music in the 19th century; Celebrity Studies in Music; Constructions of Musical Authorship in Music; Music and Memorial Culture; Orientalism in 19th-century music; Music Historiography; Film Music; History of Musicology, Music Theory, and Music Philosophy.
Weblink for further information: https://musikwissenschaft.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/team/institut/calella/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
theatre historiography; music theatre & voice; intersectional gender studies pertaining to theatre and performance
Performance Cultures of the Siglo de Oro
Power Abuse in the Performing Arts
Weblink for further information: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/anke.charton/
Email: anke.charton(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
My main research interests are music psychology and music neuroscience. I focus on these areas in human participants.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
I am particularly interested in supervising theses in the areas of music and memory research, relationships between music and language perception, and music in development (both in very young and older participants).
Weblink for further information: https://musikwissenschaft.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/team/institut/cui/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Research focuses: modern Central Asia (18th century – today) with an interest in human-environment relations, labour, vernacular textual records and heritage. Supervision areas: Topics related to the history, culture or anthropology of Central Asia.
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/persons/jeanine-dagyeli/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
German as a second language: language acquisition, language teaching, multilingualism, and social aspects / pedagogical approaches to the field of German as a second language
Weblink for further information: https://www.germ.univie.ac.at/inci-dirim/
Email: inci.dirim(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Over the last 25 years, I have worked on land rights issues (ranging from land reform to women's land rights to land grabbing), on popular and youth culture, and on qualitative research methods. My regional focus has been East Africa (especially Tanzania) and Southern Africa, as well as the Comorian diaspora in France.
Currently, my research interests lie at the intersection of African Studies and Mobility Studies. Specifically, I work on mobilities in the context of solidarity practices, focusing on entangled solidarities between Black and/or African actors and Palestinians, as well as on the role of international recruits travelling to South Africa to help fight apartheid (1960s-90s).
Another research focus is on contemporary German-language travel writing in relation to African contexts. Furthermore, I am in charge of the externally funded project "Rastafari Reasoning on Africa in Historical Perspective" (funded by the Austrian Science Fund, P 35987, 2022-2027), which was conceived and is carried out together with Dominik Frühwirth.
So far, I have supervised 56 master's or diploma theses and co-supervised 2 doctoral theses. Ongoing projects include 3 PhD theses and 6 MA theses in African Studies and related disciplines such as Global Studies and Development Studies.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
African Studies, Mobility Studies, contemporary African history, popular cultures, travel writing, resistance movements, solidarities, Eastern Africa, Southern Africa, Palestine, diasporic spaces, translocal networks,
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/persons/birgit-englert/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
historical-comparative linguistics, digital philology, language ecology/diversity, digital humanism
Weblink for further information: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/hannes.fellner/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Amerikanistik (North American Anglophone Literatures and Cultures)
Weblink for further information: https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/staff/staff/ganser/
Email: alexandra.ganser(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Prof. Dr. Lisa Gotto’s research bridges film theory, media history, and digital image culture. Her core interests include the theory, history and aesthetics of cinema, especially in contexts of post-cinema and media transformation. She explores how film practices evolve alongside digital media, investigating tensions between large and small image forms and the shifting visual logic of mobile and online screens. Her work also spans game studies and comparative media studies, with a focus on how digital media culture reshapes our perception, affect, and social practices.
She supervises PhD projects in film history, film aesthetics, media philosophy, the technological history of cinema, digital media culture, game studies, and research on identity, representation, and visual political discourses.
Weblink for further information: https://tfm.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/personal/lisa-gotto/
Email: lisa.gotto(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
In times of increasing popularity of Large Language Models (LLMs) one of my central research interests is the mitigation of bias and potential manipulation of LLMs. The manipulation relates to linguistic patterns and features as well as factual hallucinations of LLMs that potentially quietly influence human beings. To this end, I have started comparing features and facts of human communication before and after the advent of LLMs to those generated by LLMs. In addition, the analysis and mitigation of bias, e.g. gender, cultural and racial bias, in the language of LLMs have been an ongoing research interest. Furthermore, I am interested in using automated methods to detect communication used to further radicalization.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
One very interesting research topic is the automated detection of codes used in online communication to persuade people to join a radical cause or group, which is frequently done implicitly to avoid detection. Thus, any such detection method needs the ability to uncover such codified language. A second potential project relates to the comparison of linguistic features and facts in human communication to those used in LLMs and how the latter potentially influences the former. A third topic relates to methods to uncover and strengthen factual associations in hidden representations of LLMs across cultures and societies and compare the patterns learned and potential inaccuracies. Finally, the topic of security and robustness of LLMs is an interesting doctoral project. Small linguistic changes in requests, such as character perturbations, or changes of language of the request to low-resource languages hold the potential to reduce the robustness of LLMs.
Weblink for further information: https://dagmargromann.com/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
My research interests include: literary communication in the late Roman Republic and early Empire, ancient narrative techniques and their reception, narratological and cognitive science approaches to the interpretation of ancient narrative texts, the dynamics of genre interference (especially between epic and dramatic texts), descriptions of the afterlife in ancient literature, and Roman tragedies with a focus on Seneca tragicus.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
It would be desirable if the research project focused particularly on poetry from the late Republic or early Imperial period.
Weblink for further information: https://klassischephilologie.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/mitarbeiterinnen/klassische-latinistik/person/user/heila17/inum/1069/backpid/145216/
Email: andreas.heil(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Japanese Studies (Cultural Studies): contemporary Japan
Research fields: literary studies - media studies (film and television) - gender studies - postcolonial studies - diversity studies - migration studies
Weblink for further information: https://japanologie.univie.ac.at/en/staff/detail-view/user/heini2/inum/1075
Email: ina.hein(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Intersections of 'Race', Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Anglophone Cultural Production (incl. literature and cultural studies); The Politics of Cultural Production: Representations of Inequalities, Power Politics, and Norms of Subjectivity in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures; Critical Studies of Whiteness; Representations of Home, Homeland and Homemaking; Irish Studies
Weblink for further information: https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/staff/staff/detail-seite/user/heinzs85/inum/1063/backpid/30750/
Email: sarah.heinz(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Literary, filmic and cultural representations of society, sociability, communality and conviviality, queer and feminist relationships, dicourses of spirituality, human-animal studies
Weblink for further information: n/a
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Theories und methods in Theatre and Performance Studies, theatre historiography, politics and esthetics of contemporary theatre, theatricality, entanglement of acting in social life and acting on stage, theatre theory, acting theory
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/persons/stefan-hulfeld/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
As Chair of English Language Education, my main research interest lies on bilingual education. I address both tertiary and secondary implementations of English as a medium of instruction, and have recently worked intensely on conceptualising and researching disciplinary literacies / subject-specific language in these areas, with a current interest on the role played by digital, esp. LLM-based, tools in the learning and use of disciplinary literacies. (Keywords: Content and Language Integrated Learning, English Medium Instruction, disciplinary literacies)
My second research focus lies on language teacher development, specifically with regard to teacher beliefs, and means of fostering research literacy through teacher development programmes. (Keywords: teacher cognition, teacher and learner beliefs, subjective learning theories, research literacy). In addition to my university website, information on my work can also be found on https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julia-Huettner-2
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
I am happy to supervise PhD students whose research proposals align with either of my research foci.
Weblink for further information: https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/staff/staff/huettner/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Cultural and Intellectual history of Islam, History of Ideas, Islamic law
Weblink for further information: https://orientalistik.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/staff/details-staff/user/ivanyik80/inum/1073/backpid/86978/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Supervision Areas: South Slavic Cultural Studies, South Slavic Literary Studies, New Yugoslav and Post-Yugoslav Studies
Research Interests: Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin and Serbian literatures and cultures (18.-21.st centuries)
Oral Epics of the South Slavs - Heroic Tradition and its contemporary afterlives
Aesthetic strategies of dissensus, cultures of resentment in South East Europe
Literature and cultural identities, Transnational Literature in Slavic Studies, multilingualism, post-migrant cultures of gastarbajt
Yugoslav partisan literature and film, (Post-)Yugoslav film
Documentary and postdramatic theater
Post-conflict societies and (competitive) victimhood narratives
Weblink for further information: https://suedslawistik.univie.ac.at/o-nama/miranda-jakisa/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Eastern European Film and Media Studies, Gender Media Studies, Queer Theory, Feminist Science and Technology Studies, Format Theory, Critical Film and Media Historiographies, Documentary Film Theory, Intersections of Postcommunist and Postcolonial Studies
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
- Eastern European Media Politics: (Post-)Socialism in Film, (Social) Media, Visual Arts, Television
- Media-Configurations of the (Post-)Social
- (Queer-)Feminist Documentary (Film) Aesthetics
- (Austrian) Queer Films and/with New Cinema History
- Curatorship/Comparisons/Entanglements: Exploring Methods of Comparative Media Analysis
- Exploring Methods of Film Experience (Rezeptionsforschung)
Weblink for further information: https://tfm.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/personal/nicole-kandioler/
Email: nicole.kandioler(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Slavic linguistics, quantitative linguistics
Weblink for further information: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/emmerich.kelih/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
My work focuses on the social, economic, and cultural history of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey, with particular attention to consumption and environmental history, modernisation processes, and global entanglements from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Further areas include minority histories, multilingual and multiscriptural print cultures—especially Armeno-Turkish and Karamanlidika—Ottoman manuscript cultures, and the integration of digital humanities methods such as OCR/HTR and text mining in Ottoman Studies. I supervise projects on consumption and food history, migration, tourism, translingual practices, manuscript studies, and DH-based approaches to Ottoman and Turkish sources.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Potential projects may address the social and economic history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey; consumption, foodways, and material culture; migration and mobility of minority communities; multilingual communication and code-switching in late Ottoman heterographic sources; Ottoman (including Armeno-Turkish) print cultures; Ottoman manuscript cultures and knowledge transmission; as well as digital approaches to Ottoman materials, including OCR/HTR training, corpus building, and computational analysis. Further themes include urban history, global trade networks, environmental history, and the emergence of modern consumer societies in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods.
Weblink for further information: https://orientalistik.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/staff/details-staff/user/koesey43/inum/1073/backpid/86555
Email: yavuz.koese(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Modern German literature and its didactics, especially topics related to Austrian literature, politics and literature, identity and performativity, masculinity studies, as well as literature and media didactics.
Weblink for further information: https://www.germ.univie.ac.at/stefan-krammer/
Email: stefan.krammer(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
- Slavic historical linguistics
- The development and history of Slavic writing systems
- (Old) Church Slavonic language and literature
- Slavic textual philology and manuscript traditions
- Language contact in the history of Slavic languages
- Medieval manuscript cultures (core are: Eastern and South East Europe)
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/persons/roman-krivko/
Email: roman.krivko(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
My research focuses on the cultures and religions of modern South Asia with an emphasis on contemporary Hindu practices, popular devotion, and the role of sacred sound and writing in everyday life. I work on mantra traditions, material religion, and the social life of ritual objects, as well as the circulation of religious media in urban and transnational contexts. I am especially interested in intersections of anthropology, philology, and media studies, including digital ethnography and the study of visual and material forms of devotion. I also supervise projects on South Asian migration, ritual life in diasporic settings, and foodways as a site of identity formation and cultural politics.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Possible themes include material and visual cultures of devotion, contemporary mantra practices, sacred objects and their use, popular Hinduism in urban settings, and the work of ritual specialists. I also welcome projects on digital and multisensory aspects of religious practice, religious media and digital devotion, South Asian migration and identity formation, ritual participation in diasporic communities, and the cultural politics of food, purity, and community. Projects combining ethnographic fieldwork with textual, digital, or visual analysis are particularly encouraged.
Weblink for further information: https://stb.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/team/borayin-larios/user/lariosb95/inum/1083/backpid/198178/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Sociolinguistics;
Language Variation (focus on syntax, lexis and phonology);
Language Change, Language History;
Perceptual Dialectology, Perceptual Variationist Linguistics;
Language Attitudes;
Digital Humanities (especially Digital Linguistics);
Language Norms; Lexicography
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
I am open to project ideas from applicants.
Weblink for further information: https://www.germ.univie.ac.at/alexandra-n-lenz/
Email: alexandra.lenz(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Indo-European linguistics (phonology, morphology, semantics)
Comparative grammar of Tocharian
Comparative grammar of Indo-Iranian
Tocharian philology
Vedic philology
History and methods of Comparative Philology
Weblink for further information: https://linguistics.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/professorinnen/melanie-malzahn/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Popular Literature, Young Adult Literature, New Materialism, Literature of the Weimar Era
Weblink for further information: https://www.germ.univie.ac.at/dariya-manova/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
anthropology of Japan - contemporary Japanese society and culture - interversity: intersectional, interdisciplinary and interrelational approaches to social diversity - Japan and the world: migration research and diaspora studies - power and inequalities in center and periphery relations - globalization of sport and the body - health and subjective well-being - qualitative social research and empirical research methods
Weblink for further information: https://japan.univie.ac.at/en/research/research/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
- Religious, cultural, and intellectual history of premodern South Asia (with a focus on 500–1200 CE)
- Literature, rituals, history, and dissemination of early Śaivism and the tantric traditions
- Religious and cultural history of early medieval Nepal and the Himalayan region
- Epigraphy of South Asia
Weblink for further information: https://stb.univie.ac.at/en/about-us/team/nina-mirnig/
Email: nina.mirnig(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
West Slavic linguistics (contact linguistics, language geography, historical sociolinguistics) with a focus on Czech and Slovak; history of language contact between Slavic languages, German and Hungarian; Central Europe as a language area; Austriacisms; Czech and Slovak National Revival and the role of Vienna; language education in the Habsburg monarchy
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/persons/stefan-michael-newerkla/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Archive-based theater historiography of the 19th and 20th centuries, anti-Semitism, exile, the Holocaust, popular theater forms, circus, marginalized and forgotten theater forms, history of theater studies, provenance research, politics of memory, prejudice and exclusion
Weblink for further information:
https://tfm.univie.ac.at/sammlungen-einrichtungen/archiv-theaterhistorische-sammlung/
https://hots.univie.ac.at/
Email: birgit.peter(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Interpreting studies with a focus on dialogue and public service interpreting; interpreter training; interpreting ethics; interpreting for vulnerable groups; interpreting in an asylum and refugee context; activist interpreting;
Weblink for further information: https://ufind.univie.ac.at/en/person.html?id=104304
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
- children's and young adult literature in English
- contemporary British literature
- the teaching of literature in English
- social media and literature
- time travel fiction and film
- picturebooks and graphic novels (anglophone contexts)
- social justice issues in English literature, particularly for young readers
- British cultural studies
Weblink for further information: https://anglistik.univie.ac.at/reichl
Email: susanne.reichl(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
(1) Discourse Studies, Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics:
- Functional Pragmatics
- Discourse Linguistics (Critical Discourse Analysis, Functional-Pragmatic Discourse Analysis)
- philosophical, sociological, historical and linguistic discourse theories
- language and anti-/discrimination (nationalism, racism, populism, linguistic imperialism)
- doctor-patient interaction, especially focusing on semiotic and trans- or intercultural aspects
- Politolinguistics (language & politics),
- Ecolinguistics (discourses on climate change and the climate crisis)
(2) Text linguistics: text types, genre theory, text production, academic writing
(3) Argumentation theory: persuasion research, functional theory of argumentation, formal and content-related topoi, theory of fallacies, didactics of argumentation
(4) Rhetoric: political rhetoric, tropology, rhetorical theory of genres, rhetorical relevance of lexico¬graphy
(5) Semiotics: theory of Peirce, Social Semiotics, visual communication, text semiotics
Weblink for further information: https://linguistik.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/professorinnen/martin-reisigl/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Phonaesthetics; Beauty of Language Sound; Psychotypology; Psychology of Foreign (Second) Language Learning, Individual Differences in SLA, Psycholinguistics.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Topics connected to phonaesthetic research and the role of phonaesthetic language attitudes in foreign language learning. Overlaps between the aesthetic element in language learning and music. The role of phonaesthetics in language education. Phonetic Chill.
Once considered too subjective for serious inquiry, the aesthetics of language is now re-emerging as an interdisciplinary field that draws on linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, aesthetics, literary studies and musicology.
Weblink for further information: https://linktr.ee/phonaesthetics
Email: susanne.reiterer(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Topics involving AI models for tracking motions and/or emotions, genre and mood detection, and all kinds of audio signal analysis and physiological measurement are particularly welcome for research in: Analysis and synthesis of product, traffic, animal, human and musical noises/sounds, their behavioral effects/influences, and their processing in the brain; cross-modality perception; synesthesia; chill experiences; the acoustics of musical instruments (including church bells); room acoustics; and psychoacoustics (especially masking, perception of pitch, consonance and timbre), noise pollution (a joint project with the Vienna General Hospital about noise pollution for preterm babies in incubators), audio logos, as well as other topics in the area of musical acoustics, music psychology and music informatics.
Team: https://sines.univie.ac.at/team/.
Devices and infrastructure: https://sines.univie.ac.at/sines-tools/ and https://medialab.univie.ac.at/ausstattung/.
Weblink for further information: https://musikwissenschaft.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/team/institut/reuter/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
The Research Group Socio-Cognitive Translation Studies invites applications that centre on the actors in translation-related contexts, e.g., translators, clients or superiors in organisations, freelance networks or non-professional virtual contexts. We welcome studies on the changes that are affecting translation contexts, esp. those relating to the increasing heterogeneity of translation tasks and processes, new forms of cooperation and the rapid technological change. The goal is to study the socio-cognitive, collaborative and technological embedding of translation praxis. The applicant should aim to enrich concepts and theories from socio-cognitive translation studies with, e.g., situated and distributed approaches in sociology or cognitive science, workplace or network research. The methodological focus of the project should lie on the qualitative study of the phenomena, e.g., through ethnographic workplace studies, interview-based research or qualitative online research.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Any PhD project proposals on the above-mentioned research areas are welcome. Possible research topics include – but are not limited to – the following topics: leadership and management of translation-related companies, organisations, departments or networks; learning and translation expertise development at workplaces and other contexts of praxis; distributed agency and translatorship; translation expertise communication, conceptualisations and manifestations in different contexts; dimensions of lived translation expertise (actual workplace praxis, rationalizations of the social actors involved, normative descriptions); notions of translation inscribed in technological objects.
Weblink for further information: https://socotrans.univie.ac.at/
Email: hanna.risku(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Arabic dialectology, especially Maghrebi dialects and Bedouin-type dialects
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/persons/veronika-ritt-benmimoun/
Email: veronika.ritt(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
My research connects Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities through the study of language, knowledge, and meaning in digital contexts. I supervise projects at the intersection of Digital Humanities and Natural Language Processing, with a focus on explainability, interpretability, and the societal impact of large language models (LLMs). Topics include computational modeling of cultural and historical language change, responsible and transparent AI for text analysis, integration of structured knowledge and linguistic data, and evaluation of LLMs from ethical, philosophical, and linguistic perspectives. I welcome projects that bridge critical reflection and technical innovation, advancing human-centric, explainable AI in the spirit of digital humanism.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Explainability of AI systems, including linguistic and human-centered perspectives such as discourse, pragmatics, and usage context. Multi-faceted explanation approaches for complex AI agents, digital humanities environments, and other use-cases.
Small LLMs and agent systems for academia: controllable, open-source models enabling transparent and sustainable research; multilingual LLMs and those designed for under-resourced languages; cognitively and linguistically motivated architectures.
Further topics at the intersection of LLM research, computational linguistics, and digital humanities, combining critical reflection with technical innovation.
Weblink for further information: https://www.benjaminroth.net/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
I supervise African Studies projects that deploy an historical perspective (19th-21st centuries). Of particular interests would be topics on urban history, the study of religion and socio-political transformation, mobility studies, radio history or an interest in photography. I would be grateful if in the application archives to be consulted would be mentioned.
It will be an advantage if the dissertation project would aim at establishing links between African Studies and global history research.
Weblink for further information: https://afrika.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/mitarbeiterinnen/einzelansicht-personal/user/ruethek3/inum/1061/backpid/69548/
(starting at Uni Vienna on Feb 15th 2026)
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Sociolinguistics, Linguistic Anthropology, Discourse Analysis, Language Ideologies, Sociolinguistic and Anthropological Perspectives on Large Language Models, Language, Transnationalisation and Globalisation, Language and Digital Infrastructures, Language Contact and Creolisation, Multilingualism, Posthumanist Linguistics, Discursive and Material Constructions of Language
Weblink for further information: https://www.kuwi.europa-uni.de/en/professuren-mitarbeitende/sprachgebrauch-migration/team/lehrstuhlinhaber-in/pv-lehrstuhlinhaber-in/index.html
Email: bschneider(at)europa-uni.de
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
German as a Foreign Language / GFL teaching and learning / GFL Applied Linguistics
Weblink for further information: https://www.germ.univie.ac.at/karen-schramm/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
* Multilingual education
* Literary learning in the language classroom
* Cultural studies and the language classroom
* Postmigrant perspectives on education
* Science propaedeutics in schools
* Language policies
* Racism in educational contexts
Weblink for further information: https://www.univie.ac.at/germanistik/hannes-schweiger/
Email: hannes.schweiger(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
- Slavic literatures and cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian literatures (19th–21st centuries)
- Energy and environmental humanities: ecocriticism, extractivism, energy infrastructures, and fossil fuel cultures
- Posthuman studies: more-than-human perspectives, human-animal relations, and material entanglements
- Urban imaginaries: representations of the city, particularly in contexts of war, conflict, and uprisings
- Memory and literature: memory cultures, literature as testimony and memory practice
- (Post)migrant cultures and literatures in contemporary literature and media
- Gender studies: intersections of gender with literature, culture, and material infrastructures
- Intermediality: entanglements of literature, film, music, games, and other media
- Central Europe as concept and discourse (Mitteleuropa) in literature and culture
- Literary geography and cartography: spatial configurations, borders, centers, peripheries, and mapping practices
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
- 18th–21st century Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian literatures and cultures, with possibilities for comparative approaches to other Slavic or non-Slavic contexts
- Memory and literature: memory cultures and narratives, literature as testimony and memory practice
- Urban imaginaries: representations of the city in literature, film, games, and music
- Ecocriticism and environmental humanities: more-than-human perspectives and entanglements in literary/cultural representation
- Extractivism and energy humanities: fossil fuels, energy infrastructures, and their intersections with gender in literature, film, and music
- Literature and space: borders, centers, peripheries, heterotopias, and other spatial configurations
- Central Europe as concept and discourse in literature and culture
- Migration and postmigrant perspectives in literature, film, music, and digital media
- Transnational and comparative approaches to Slavic literatures and cultures
- Aesthetics of Resistance: uprisings, strikes and upheavals in literature, film, music, and games
Weblink for further information: https://ufind.univie.ac.at/de/person.html?id=1019032
Email: anna.seidel(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Film and Media Studies; Cultural Studies; Micropolitics; Queer/Gender Studies; Class and social difference in film and media; New Materialism
Weblink for further information: https://tfm.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/personal/details/user/seiera3/inum/1085/backpid/12902/
Email: andrea.seier(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Sociolinguistics, Metapragmatics, Language Ideologies, Multimodality, Discourse Analysis
Weblink for further information: https://www.spitzmueller.org
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
My attention is currently focused on the following issues. First, I study how the Chinese state seeks to morally engineer society by shaping citizens’ behaviors, values, and beliefs toward greater concern for the common good and toward social conservatism. Second, I investigate how privacy and surveillance are perceived, debated, and negotiated in Chinese society. In particular, I examine how citizens understand different threats to their privacy and how the state frames surveillance in ways that deepen its penetration of society. Third, I analyze how citizens in East Asia (currently Taiwan, South Korea, and China) imagine their political community and identity. Fourth, I am interested in how the process of rapid modernization has affected political culture, values, and behaviors in Chinese-speaking societies.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
I am open to (co-)supervise topics investigating issues that are related to my current research foci. I can also supervise a broader range of research designs on political culture, political behavior, and contentious politics, when they are comparative and have an East Asian/Chinese angle.
Weblink for further information: http://hcsteinhardt.org/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
My research interests in the field of German studies are, in particular:
Austrian literature from the 19th century to the present day, Cold War literature, modern literature in political and media contexts, exile literature, reading research and modern reading culture, digital social reading.
Weblink for further information: https://www.germ.univie.ac.at/guenther-stocker/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
I have three main areas of interest: Yiddish linguistics, syntax of focus and the syntax-phonology interface, language acquisition and I offer to supervise theses in all three.
Since 2018, I have been working on Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish. In an AHRC-funded (UK) research project, we carried out field work, resulting in over 100 hours of recordings with speakers of CHY from all over the world. Our research targeted theoretical linguistic analysis of CHY as well as its sociolinguistic context.
I have worked on the syntax of focus movement since my doctoral thesis in 2001. I have developed the idea that syntactic movement can be motivated by prosodic well-formedness requirements, so-called stress-driven movement, for instance in Hungarian.
Related to this, but also independently, I have a long-standing interest in working on the syntax-prosody interface. Specifically, on how the syntactic clause maps onto the intonational phrase in prosodic structure.
In addition, I am also interested in scopal ambiguities and its acquisition and in the acquisition of prosodic focus, and language acquisition more generally.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
I offer the following topics:
(i) Yiddish linguistics- (ia) theoretical linguistics, morphosyntax and language change; (ib) Yiddish language development. If you are interested, read Belk, Zoë, Lily Kahn & Szendrői, K.E. 2020a. Complete loss of case and gender within two generations: evidence from Stamford Hill Hasidic Yiddish. J. of Comp. Ger. Ling 23: 271–326, and contact me for more details.
(ii) Syntax-prosody interface. If you are interested, read Hamlaoui, Fatima & Szendrői, K.E. 2015. A flexible approach to the syntax-phonology mapping of intonational phrases. Phonology 35 (1): 79-110, and contact me for more details.
(iii) Early syntax development, together with Judit Gervain. If interested, read Gervain, J. & J. Werker. 2013. “Tuned to Grammar: Prosody Cues Word Order in Bilingual Infants.” Nature Comms, 4:1490, and contact me for more details.
Weblink for further information: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/kriszta.eszter.szendroei/
Email: kriszta.szendroi(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
African Comparative Literatures (Swahiliphone, Francophone, Anglophone, India Oceanic, Maghrebian); African-Diasporic Literatures; African Literatures and Cultures and Reconfiguring African Studies; Critical African(a) Studies; African Literatures and Intercultural Dialogues; African Literatures in public spaces
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/persons/r%C3%A9mi-armand-tchokothe/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
screenwriting studies, film music, silent cinema, film history, narration
Weblink for further information: https://tieber.wordpress.com
Email: claus.tieber(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
My supervision focuses broadly on the relationship between language and power, with a particular emphasis on educational contexts. I am interested in how linguistic practices produce and reproduce inequalities, and in how (educational) systems can strengthen equity and equal opportunities. Relevant fields include (educational) language policy—both language as a subject and language of instruction—teacher education, heteroglossic language practices, processes of minoritization as well as revitalization and reclamation, and political or public discourses of inclusion and exclusion. I also welcome projects concerned with linking formal and informal language learning. The overarching question—“What roles does language play in the pluralistic society of the 21st century?” (strategic priority culture, education, democracy) lies at the core of the supervision I offer. Key concerns include strengthening linguistic diversity, securing language rights, and promoting social justice and sustainability.
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Research themes may focus on minoritization in its various forms. I especially welcome projects that connect the strategic priority culture, education, democracy with the priority climate, environment, sustainability, and that extend or draw on insights generated through the Horizon Project RISE UP (ending in January 2026). I supervise doctoral research on language reclamation and revitalization, particularly when using ethnographic and participatory approaches. Projects may address minoritization in any global context, though those that engage with one of the RISE UP partner communities or with Breton-speaking communities are especially encouraged.
Weblink for further information: sllf.univie.ac.at; riseupproject.eu
Email: eva.vetter(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Digital Scholarly editions; digital text analysis; especially applied to medieval or born digital texts; intertextuality and text reuse detection; digital methods for historical semantics; electronic literature
Weblink for further information: https://ufind.univie.ac.at/de/person.html?id=1011291
Email: gabriel.viehhauser(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Aesthetics, theory, and politics of the media
Capitalism and class society
Authenticity
Climate catastrophe
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
If you're interested in media and cultural studies, especially poststructuralist approaches, representation or discourse analysis, I'd love to hear from you.
Weblink for further information: http://www.thomaswaitz.at/
Email: t.waitz(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Graeco-Arabic translation movement, Philosophy and Medicine in the Classical Arabic Period, Arabic Manuscript Studies
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/persons/elvira-wakelnig/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Iberoromance Linguistics
Weblink for further information: https://homepage.univie.ac.at/albert.wall/
Email: albert.wall(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Anglophone Cultural Studies, Gender and Queer Studies, Popular Culture, Disability Studies, Russian American Relations
Possible research themes or topics for doctoral projects
Disability in Anglophone Media, Video Games and Disability, Antiliberalism and American Literature and Culture, American Popular Culture
Weblink for further information: https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/persons/maria-katharina-wiedlack/
Email: katharina.wiedlack(at)univie.ac.at
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Deutschsprachige Minderheiten in Lateinamerika; Jugendsprachen in Wien;
Weblink for further information: https://www.germ.univie.ac.at/patrick-wolf-farre/
Research Interests and Supervision Areas
Comparative Literature, German, Polish Literatures, Jewish Literatures, Intermedia
Weblink for further information: https://complit.univie.ac.at/ueber-uns/mitarbeiterinnen/personal-detailansicht/user/paulaw79/inum/1065/backpid/110804/
Email: paula.wojcik(at)univie.ac.at