In order to further its successful research areas, the Faculty will, over the next few years, focus on

• Cultural and social transformations in Asia and Africa
• Aesthetic communication and mediality
• Language development, language contact and language attitude

as key research and development areas that respond to strong societal demands on the one hand, and reflect current developments in research on the other. Finally, even though the Faculty has increasingly focused on international contexts, it still needs to preserve the special characteristics that Vienna possesses as a location.

Cultural and socio-cultural transformations in Asia and Africa

This key research area continues the successful research areas of contemporary Asia, but includes an additional continent, and more specifically focuses on processes of transformation and their historical basis, in order to contribute to the current social discourses on mobility, migration, identity and diaspora phenomena, in line with the third-mission function of the University. This key research area draws on existing similar research areas of other faculties, e.g. the Faculty of Social Sciences.

One focus is on researching the African diaspora with regard to its global relationships with the Atlantic area (the Americas and the Caribbean) and Eastern Asia. Further challenges regarding the study of transformation processes in economic, political, cultural and social institutions in the countries of Eastern Asia include regionalism as well as gender issues and environmental policy.

When studying transformation processes in the societies of Southern and Central Asia as well as the Middle East including Northern Africa, the focus is on the area of religious studies (covering synchronic and diachronic aspects) and on interdisciplinary research into the socio-cultural longue durée in the Middle East.

Cultural Aesthetic communication and mediality

Aesthetic communication is a key subject of the humanities that is increasingly becoming the focus of its methodological reflections when discussing the challenges of the digital era. The resulting social, political and, again, aesthetic dimensions of this dynamic play a central role in its research.

After implementing the initiatives in the field of aesthetic communication presented in the past Development Plan, questions of mediality, multimodality and digital media will also become a particular focus in the disciplines of literature studies and the philologies, theatre, film and media studies as well as musicology. Here, the MediaLab provides an important infrastructure.

Language development, language contact and language attitudes

The linguistic disciplines at the Faculty attach particular importance to a productive exchange between a formal linguistic view of language and its investigation as a socially embedded means of communication.

After establishing the area of psycholinguistics as part of the area of cognitive science at the Neuroscience Cluster of the University, intra-faculty cooperation in the fields of linguistics and musicology will be intensified further. This includes an enhancement of the academic profile in the field of language teacher education research and professional content knowledge, in cooperation with the Centre for Teacher Education and the university colleges of teacher education.

Numerous research projects at the Faculty examine the contact of national languages with autochthonous minorities and current migration languages. This field provides a good opportunity for contributing to the Third Mission of the University and for cooperating with other key research areas at the University.