Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences

ViDSS

The Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences promotes innovative, excellent, problem-oriented doctoral research that aspires to contribute to societal debates and address key global challenges.

Background: derknopfdruecker.com; left: Eva Kössner; center: Christian Lendl; right: Eva Kössner

Doctoral programme

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Benefits for ViDSS members

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Activities and events

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Open positions

Discover fully funded doctoral positions currently announced by ViDSS or the departments that support ViDSS.

Committed to the highest standards of doctoral education

The cohorts trained and supported by the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences / ViDSS are embedded in a vibrant research environment with strong international networks. ViDSS connects a wide spectrum of disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary perspectives and embraces the full range of epistemological, methodological, and theoretical approaches pursued at the Faculty of Social Sciences. Doctoral candidates receive research training and write theses in the fields of communication, demography, development studies, nursing science, political science, science and technology studies, social and cultural anthropology, and sociology.

Committed to the highest standards of doctoral education and close, attentive supervision, ViDSS equips candidates to master key debates, theories, and methods in the social sciences. As a result, ViDSS graduates are highly sought after by employers in academia and beyond.

PhD in the spotlight

sowi:doc Fellows 2026

Fellowships and awards

We warmly welcome our new sowi:doc Fellows funded through the centrally organised Doctoral Recruitment Call in the Social Sciences, Humanities and Cultural Studies 2026 and ViDSS: Alexandra Elton Bergun, Luke David Fischer, Eva Filipová, Elaine Goldberg, Aziz Hreljić, Daisuke Nakamura, Colin Pourtallier, Lori Šramel Cebular, Sona Vybostokova and Ziyan Michelle Zhu!

What impact does the election in Israel have on Europe?

Media coverage

As a guest on the ORF2 programme ‘Guten Morgen Österreich’ , ViDSS student member Adham Hamed spoke about the background to the Knesset elections, the Israeli election campaign, and gave an outlook on the forthcoming coalition negotiations and the European perspective on the elections. (In German)

El Salvador as a real-life social experiment with cryptocurrency

Outreach

Together with Tobias Boos, ViDSS student member Lina Schmid shared insights from the research project „Die Cultural Political Economy von Bitcoin im Globalen Süden (BITELSA)“, which uses El Salvador as a case study to examine the introduction of Bitcoin as a state-sanctioned means of payment, and the interests driving this process. (In German)

Science quoted in Parliament: ‘But that’s been scientifically proven!’

Media coverage

A study by ViDSS student member Daniel Wiesner, together with Sophie Lecheler and Jakob-Moritz Eberl, offers a nuanced understanding of how politicians use science in debates to enhance the legitimacy of their arguments. (In German)

Klaus Schönbach Award 2026 for Rinat Meerson and Jaroslava Kaňková

Fellowships and awards

ViDSS student member Rinat Meerson and ViDSS alumna Jaroslava Kaňková received the Klaus Schönbach Award 2026 for their research project ‘Too rushed and flattered to notice? Developing and testing a critical AI literacy intervention countering the persuasive and epistemic risks of sycophantic AI’. Congratulations!

Frobenius Research Promotion Prize 2026 for ViDSS alumna Anna Žabicka

Fellowships and awards

ViDSS alumna Anna Žabicka received the Frobenius Research Promotion Prize 2026 for her doctoral thesis entitled ‘All roads lead to the Pansionāts: State care as a socio-spatial fix in an emptying rural Latvia’. Congratulations!

PhD in the spotlight