How do public organisations deal with linguistic diversity?
Dealing with (linguistic) plurality has far-reaching consequences for social justice and influences the lifeworlds of all people living in a migration society. Clara Holzinger’s research is focused on public organisations, the challenges that employees and clients perceive, and the solution strategies they apply.

Clara Holzinger: Linguistic diversity and social justice
Sociologist Clara Holzinger explains why and how she explores the tension between traditionally monolingual organisational structures such as the Austrian Public Employment Service and de facto social plurilingualism. She won the Impact.Award 2022 that is awarded for outstanding dissertation projects with the potential to achieve social, cultural or economic added value. (German with English subtitles)

“Unser Leben mit Plastik”: Encouraging youth to discuss plastics
Laura Bomm from the Department of Science and Technology Studies presents the discussion game that she recently created for the ScienceCenter-Netzwerk. The game is inspired by a citizen engagement method that she developed together with colleagues earlier in her PhD and will accompany the Ocean Eye Escape Box on its journey through Austria. (In German)

Ana Cartaxo: Missed nursing care in Austria
The Corona crisis has shown: Nurses keep our health system running; and although Austria has the highest hospital bed density, the number of nursing staff is low. Ana Cartaxo from the Department of Nursing Science is investigating this discrepancy in her PhD project.

FutureArctic: ‘Big data’ and shifts in research practices
Virginia Vargolskaia from the Department of Science and Technology Studies tells us what a social scientist can do for climate research and machine learning. FutureArctic is an EU MSCA funded ITN, taking a glimpse into the future of the (sub)Arctic in a warming climate.

Digital remedy for countering hate speech
Living in this day and age it is almost unavoidable to encounter hate-speech and bullying. ViDSS student Senad Alibegović explains at TEDxFerhadija why small groups are possibly the best remedy for it.

Faime Alpagu: Migration narratives
While it is well accepted that migration shapes society, the perception of this complex phenomenon is often shaped by clichéd images of migrants. Focusing on biographies, moving objects and different modes of expression, sociologist Faime Alpagu contributes to a comprehensive understanding of migration.

Jana Egelhofer: The fake news debate and its consequences
Reports on the coronavirus as a Chinese bioweapon or the ‘Pizzagate’ theory demonstrate that fake news is one of the most widely discussed topics in political communication. Jana Laura Egelhofer takes a closer look at the current debate surrounding the term ‘fake news’.

Wanda Spahl: Health needs of refugees
Political scientist Wanda Spahl conducts research on the health needs of refugees and investigates whether and how these needs are met. With her research, she aims to find ways to provide solutions for those who have struggles to use their rights for health care. (German with English subtitles)

Sigrid Wenzel: Fieldwork in the Sakha republic (Yakutia)
Social and cultural anthropologist Sigrid Wenzel talks about her doctoral project on human-infrastructure relations in the context of a newly constructed railroad line. (German with English subtitles)

How do we want to work? (by David W. Schiestl, Fabian Kalleitner, Licia Bobzien, and Lukas Schlögl)
Was zählt mehr: ein hohes Einkommen, ein sicherer Arbeitsplatz oder viel Freizeit? Unter dem Eindruck des Fachkräftemangels und von Entwicklungen wie “Home Office” wurde im öffentlichen Diskurs zuletzt häufig ein Wandel der Arbeitswerte thematisiert. Auf Grundlage von Daten des ACPP werfen wir in diesem Beitrag einen Blick auf die Veränderungen und Kontinuitäten ...

Exploring deep sea ecology and ecosystems in São Paulo (by Arne Langlet)
“It is normal that every researcher discovers a new species in this area,” the doctoral student Bruno Henrique told me when I congratulated him to describing a new species in his PhD thesis. Indeed, also Bachelor student André Calloni described a new brittle star in his bachelor thesis which consists of a catalog of spectacular photographs of brittle stars. When asking about their methodology ...

How global will the new biodiversity framework be? (by Ina Tessnow-von Wysocki)
Member States to the United Nations are meeting in Montreal, Canada to adopt the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). An Open-ended Working Group was tasked to prepare the draft text prior to the upcoming Conference of the Parties (COP). As outstanding issues remained unresolved, time for discussions was extended further ...

Moving mountains to ship iron: Transportation hierarchies in the Scandinavian Arctic (by Ria-Maria Adams and Mia Bennett)
Iron ore is fundamental to modernity from scales microscopic to monumental. Embedded within the glittery makeup we wear, the cell phones we carry, the bridges we cross, and the railways we ride, the ferrous mineral is a vital component to an infinite number of products. With the world population now over 8 billion people, ...

Nothing if not critical: Exploring digital methods beyond qualitative and quantitative approaches (by Virginia Vargolskaia)
In November 2022, Pouya Sepehr and I organised a workshop with Tommaso Venturini and Kari de Pryck, two scholars recently academically settled at the University of Geneva. The workshop was kindly funded by the ViDSS and supported by Professor Sarah Davies from our home department ...

Some reflections on research on Long Covid and ME/CFS (by Ruth Falkenberg)
I have been lying in bed with Long Covid for nearly three months now. Even small tasks are incredibly exhausting for me. I have constant pains, and I am basically unable to continue my PhD, which I would so much like to move forward. This is not what this short piece is about, but I want to disclose from the beginning from what position I am writing these reflections ...

[Politics] practices of collaboration (by Daniela Paredes Grijalva)
Anthropology has been dubbed the child of colonialism and rightly so. Practices of stealing, of extracting, of taking both material and immaterial things have been widely condemned. The assumption that trained male anthropologists from the North are the only ones ...

Collaboratively exploring notions of innovativeness in research practices (by Ruth Falkenberg, Maximilian Fochler, and Lisa Sigl)
A short tale of interdisciplinary publishing. Together with the natural science partners in our project Valuing, Being, and Knowing in Research Practices, we have recently published a short article in the Science & Society section of the EMBO journal. At least for one of us ...

An ocean of possibilities: Marine biodiversity in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework (by Silvia Ruiz)
The meetings of the second part of the WG2020-3 were hybrid: state delegates could give statements and text proposals on-site or online, as well as support or contest interventions of other states and NGOs online in real time if they had to isolate for 5 days ...

From mines to financial markets (by Aleksandra Wojewska)
As the efforts toward a socio-ecological transformation intensify, the importance of electric vehicles will increase due to their lower emissions and reduced reliance on fossil fuels. However, the production of car batteries presents a sustainability contradiction ...

First a job, then a family? (by Brian Matthew Buh)
If you ask a 22-year-old if they want children, they are likely to say “maybe”. Not because they don’t imagine someday having a family, but because they have a lot to do before then. When we talk about starting a family we are actually talking about a series of events ...

Research during Covid – a report from the field (by Marlene Persch)
Doing research during Covid seemed impossible as the global pandemic spread. Pandemic related restrictions had different effects on researchers. While those having returned from the field enjoyed the time to write their thesis, others had to delay their field stay due to travel restrictions. In the continuing months ...

Freedom of the press: Is media ever free of influences? (by Hamza Amin)
“We need a free media, not just freedom of speech.” – Tom Scholz. Being an avid consumer of news media, the fundamental idea behind this quote motivated me to leave the field of business administration and enrol on the master’s programme in Global Media and Communication at the University of Warwick. That was the first step towards …

Polyamory – self-perception vs. media representation (by Stefan F.* Ossmann)
Polyamory – understood as a consensual relationship between more than two people based on emotional love and intimate acts over a longer period of time – is on the rise. The topic appeared, academically and socially, in the mid-1990s. However, it was not until 2007 …

Smartphones “In-Between” or: What Do Smartphones Have in Common With Doors? (by Suzana Jovicic)
It is Friday night in a youth centre on the outskirts of Vienna; the lights are dim, and loud local Rap music is blaring in the background. A girl sits alone on the old sofa, seemingly oblivious to the noise and chaos around her. Her face glows a bright red that reflects off her smartphone, painting the picture of a lonely teenager who …

The Austrian Corona Panel Project (by Noelle Lebernegg)
The current crisis has changed our everyday lives fundamentally, and many western democracies find themselves in situations unlike anything since the Second World War. However, most experts agree, to be able to return to some form of normality …

The ambivalence of leaving and arriving
On the podcast Aufnahmebereit, ViDSS Alumna Faime Alpagu talks about her dissertation “Migration Narratives Juxtaposed”. In conversation with Judith Kohlenberger, Faime explains what she found when she analysed biographies, photos and (audio) letters of so-called guest workers in Austria and compared them to official documents such as working contracts. (In German)

FFSci Feierabendtalk with Teresa Weikmann
In the new episode of the Fast Forward Science Feierabendtalk “What the Fact?! Fake News auf Social Media”, Communication scientist Teresa Weikmann explains why cheap or shallow fakes are still more common than political deep fakes and what we need to prepare for when it comes to the future of visual disinformation. (In German)

Health, pandemic and refuge (Ars Boni, episode 288)
ViDSS students Ivan Josipovic and Wanda Spahl discuss with Nikolaus Forgo the insights that their doctoral research projects provide into the health situation of refugees and the changes that the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have brought. (In German)

Radio Klassik: What does solidarity mean?
Political scientist Wanda Spahl discusses the meaning of solidarity, talks about the concept’s history and presents findings from her PhD project about refugees’ health needs and from the international qualitative research project Solidarity in Times of a Pandemic. (In German)

Digitize! in the podcast Ars aequi (episode 6)
Together with Filip Paspalj, political scientist Seliem El-Sayed presents the project Digitize! where he is developing ethical and social standards for the collection and use of data in Computational Social Sciences.

Turkey’s government uses disaster for profit
Together with Sehrazat G. Mart, social and cultural anthropologist Arjin Tas explains why nature alone isn’t to blame for the high number of deaths caused by the recent Kahramanmaras earthquakes and why the already announced post-disaster reconstruction projects are highly political. (Foreign Policy)

Big tech makes political choices about our data: We should do the same
Together with Barbara Prainsack, political scientist Seliem El-Sayed explains why our focus on individual control over personal data is insufficient to tackle the problems of the digital age. They argue for strengthening mechanisms of collective control over data to effectively address harmful data practices. (Bot Populi)

The grey zones of good scientific practice
Together with Ulrike Felt, Florentine Frantz (science and technology studies) presents the research project “Borderlands of Good Scientific Practice” where they ask what good scientific practice means and for whom. Through a card-based discussion method, they explore the grey zones of good scientific practice and encourage researchers to address them. (impact-sowi.univie.ac.at, in German)

The forgotten biodiversity crisis
Together with Stefan Dullinger and Alice Vadrot, political scientist Silvia Ruiz explains why the biodiversity agreement signed at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Montréal falls short of expectations and why it makes a difference whether we talk about “seas” or “oceans”. (wienerzeitung.at, in German)

Dating apps and their effects on romantic relationships
In the documentary “The Tinder Trap” produced by the Austrian TV channel Puls 4, communication scientist Marina F. Thomas explains why we start to use dating apps, why it’s difficult to stop swiping and how online dating influences the way we perceive and assess others when searching for a partner. (Puls 4, in German)

First-ever left-wing government in Colombia
Social and cultural anthropologist Marcela Torres Heredia explains why the outcome of the latest presidential elections in Colombia is historical and what challenges lie ahead. (mosaik, in German)

Anna’s mission is to make weather research useful for the people of East Greenland
Social and cultural anthropologist Anna Burdenski is spending ten months in Tasiilaq because she wants to understand life in the town. Read more about Anna’s fieldwork in East Greenland and how she contributes to building cooperation between the locals and international climate researchers. (Arctic Hub)

Accessing local knowledge from afar. A hybrid research project
Political scientist by Josefa Maria Stiegler asks how a feminist may conduct urban research during a global pandemic and how we can get close to the lived realities of communities we seek to study despite physical distance. (Urban Matters)

Decolonial practices
Social and cultural anthropologist Marcela Torres Heredia highlights how colonial structures are still permeating our everyday lives and explains why we have to actively engage with silences and invisibilities to decolonise social structures and knowledge production. (polis aktuell, in German)

Neither seen nor heard: Families during the pandemic
Together with her colleagues, sociologist Petra Dirnberger presents the research project Corona and Family Lives which explores the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on parents and their families. (impact-sowi.univie.ac.at, in German)

Why electric cars are not the solution
Political scientist Mathias Krams explains why mobility itself has to be rethought to protect the climate and support socio-economic change. (science.orf.at, in German)

Non-mainstream news sites erode people’s interest in politics
Communication scientist Franz Reiter talks about his new study on the consequences of exposure to alternative media sites. (niemanlab.org)

“Good” compliance and “bad” resistance?
Political scientist Wanda Spahl about the role and meaning of COVID-19 measures for individuals and groups. (derstandard.at, in German)

The future of Afghanistan is not lost yet
Sociologist Mirwais Wakil about the role of the European Union in shaping the future of Afghanistan and what everyone can do to support people from Afghanistan in the current situation. (derstandard.at, in German)

Early stage researchers during Covid-19
Political scientist Josefa Maria Stiegler talks about an initiave of early stage researchers calling for financial support of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers during the Covid-19 pandemic. (derstandard.at, in German)

Bank Austria Research Award for two ViDSS students
Demographer Nicholas Gailey and communication scientist Julia Stranzl were awarded the Bank Austria Research Award 2023 for their research projects on demographic futures (Gailey, main award) and the strategic role of internal communications (Stranzl, merit award). With the award, the Bank Austria Foundation for Science and Research at the University of Vienna aims to support particularly interesting and promising research projects of early career researchers.

Best paper award for ViDSS student Samira Rahimi Mavi
For the paper “Communicating about halal products to non-Muslim consumers – The role of fit and skepticism”, Samira Rahimi Mavi was awarded the Best Paper Award at the 27th International Corporate and Marketing Communications Conference in Cranfield. The paper was co-authored with Sabine Einwiller and Ingrid Wahl.

sowi:doc Awards 2022
The sowi:doc Awards for the academic year 2021/2022 are awarded to Jana Laura Egelhofer, Suzana Jovičić, Andreas Nanz and Paul Trauttmansdorff-Weinsberg for their outstanding research contributions in the framework of their doctoral thesis.

sowi:doc Fellows 2022
We warmly welcome our new sowi:docs Fellows! Arjin Tas (social and cultural anthropology) will conduct research on the use of counterinsurgency strategies in urban restructuring in Turkey and Aleksandra Wojewska (development studies) on price formation and socio-ecological transformation in global production networks in Sub-Saharan Africa.

GAIN Gender & Agency Prize 2022 for Leda Sutlović
Political scientist Leda Sutlović was awarded the GAIN Gender & Agency Prize for her doctoral thesis entitled “Interpreting post-socialist gendered transformations through feminist institutionalism, ideas and knowledge: The case of Croatia (1970–2010)”. The prize is awarded annually by the research platform GAIN – Gender: Ambivalent In_Visibilities.

Theodor Körner Förderpreis 2022 for two ViDSS students
Political scientist Magdalena Eitenberger and sociologist Clara Holzinger were awarded the Theodor Körner Förderpreis for their doctoral thesis projects on technologising care in chronic illness (Eitenberger) and migration-related linguistic heterogeneity (Holzinger). The Förderpreis is awarded to early stage researchers for their outstanding work in progress.

Forschungspreis Integration for Faime Alpagu
Sociologist Faime Alpagu was awarded the Forschungspreis Integration 2022 for her dissertation entitled “Migration Narratives Juxtaposed: A Sociological Analysis of Biographies, Photos and (Audio) Letters of ‘Guest Workers’ from Turkey living in Austria”. The prize is awarded for outstanding academic theses in the fields of migration and integration by the ÖIF, the Österreichische Integrationsfonds.

Award of Excellence and Förderpreis Medienforschung for Jana Egelhofer
Communication scientist Jana Egelhofer was awarded the Staatspreis für die besten Dissertationen 2022 (Award of Excellence, Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research) and the Förderpreis Medienforschung (Verband Österreichischer Zeitungen) for her doctoral thesis entitled “I don’t like it – let’s call it ‘fake’ – The content and consequences of the fake news debate”.

Paper award for Helena Knupfer and Ruta Kaskeleviciute
For the paper “Silent sympathy: News attention, subtle support for far-right extremism, and negative attitudes toward Muslims”, Helena Knupfer and Ruta Kaskeleviciute were awarded the First Place Faculty Paper Award 2022 from the Religion & Media Interest Group at the AEJMC annual convention in Detroit. The paper was co-authored with Jörg Matthes.

Best paper award for ViDSS student Daniel Thiele
Daniel Thiele was awarded the Best Paper Award at the ICA Regional Conference on Computational Communication Research 2022 for his paper “‘Don’t believe the media’s pandemic propaganda!!!’ How Covid-19 affected populist Facebook user comments in seven European countries.” The award honours the most outstanding contribution to the conference from an early career scholar.

ÖAW DOC Fellowships for ViDSS students
Four members of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences are among this year's recipients of a DOC Fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Congratulations to social and cultural anthropologists Eline Castelijns and Saskya Tschebann, communication scientist Hannah Greber and sociologist Paul Malschinger!

Best paper award for ViDSS student Daniel Wolfgruber
For the paper “Perceived inclusion at the workplace and the propensity to stand one’s ground in conflict situations”, Daniel Wolfgruber was awarded the Top Student Paper Award 2022 from the Organizational Communication Division of the International Communication Organisation. The paper was co-authored with Sabine Einwiller and presented at the Annual ICA Conference.

sowi:doc Awards 2021
The sowi:doc Awards for the academic year 2020/2021 have been awarded to Sabina Cveček, Vera Gallistl and Esther Greussing. Each year, the Faculty of Social Sciences awards the sowi:doc Awards to three doctoral graduates for their outstanding research contributions in the framework of their doctoral thesis.

Theodor Körner Förderpreis 2021 for ViDSS student Fabian Kalleitner
Sociologist Fabian Kalleitner was awarded the Theodor Körner Förderpreis for his doctoral thesis project entitled “Explaining preferences for redistributive taxation”. The Förderpreis is awarded to early stage researchers for their outstanding work in progress.

Research Award 2021 for three ViDSS students
Teresa Weikmann, Alina Nikolaou and Hannah Greber won the Research Award of the Department of Communciation 2021 with their proposal “Do you believe? How different forms of deepfakes challenge our trust in the senses”. The research project investigates to which extent different media formats are evaluated as credible and to which extent the reveal of having seen a deepfake challenges the trust of participants in their own ability to see, hear and ultimately judge whether a media form is real or fake.

sowi:docs Fellows 2021
We warmly welcome our five new sowi:docs Fellows Ahrabhi Kathirgamalingam, Felix Maile, Hannah Myott, Selina Noetzel and Silvia Ruiz Rodríguez! Their projects cover the discursive construction of racism, the restrictive refugee policies in Austria and the U.S., uneven development in global value chains, marine biodiversity negotiations and online political microtargeting.

Impact.Awards for ViDSS students Faime Alpagu and Wanda Spahl
The Impact.Award is awarded for outstanding dissertation projects with the potential to reach target groups outside the scientific community and to achieve social, cultural or economic added value. In 2021, sociologist Faime Alpagu and political scientist Wanda Spahl were among the prize winners.

Award-winning essay by ViDSS student and SC member Catherine Raya Polishchuk
Social and cultural anthropologist Catherine Raya Polishchuk co-authored the essay “Inspecting temporality” which won the second prize in the essay competition “What can science achieve during pandemics?”

Latest Perspectives from Anthropology
ViDSS students and graduates from the doctoral programme in Social Sciences presented their doctoral thesis projects in a poster exhibition at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology. The posters are available online.