Irish Studies

Research and Teaching Foci

Irish Studies at the Department has a strong research focus on Irish literature and culture. Our research and teaching foci include:

  • Austria- & Southeastern Europe-Related Cultural Transfer & Circulation
  • Contemporary Feminist Activism in Ireland
  • Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance
  • Cultural Production during the Celtic Tiger
  • Irish (Post)Modernism, James Joyce, Flann O’Brien
  • Postcolonial Ireland and Ambivalent Irish Whitenesses 
  • Narrative and Filmic Assessments of Irishness as a National Identity
  • Stage Irishness
  • The Literary Hoax
  • The Troubles
  • The Tudor Conquest and Its Consequences: Famine, hetero-stereotyping, othering

Research Cooperations

Charles University Prague; Leeds Beckett University; Paris-Lodron Universität Salzburg; University College Dublin(UCD); University of Exeter; University of Ljubljana; EFACIS: The European Federation of Associations and Centres of Irish Studies; IASIL: The International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures; The International James Joyce Foundation; The James Joyce Italian Foundation (Università Roma III). 

Centers & Research Projects

  • Anglophone High Modernism and Southeastern Europe (application)
  • Cultural mediation in producing and teaching British and American plays in Austria and Slovenia (OeAd)
  • The Relative Skin: Whiteness in Contemporary Irish Literature and Film (book project)
  • Irish Modernisms: Gaps, Conjectures, Possibilities: International Conference (2016) and Publication (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021)
  • Stage Irish: The Vienna Irish Studies and Cultural Theory Summer School (2018), International EFACIS Conference (2019) and publication (WVT, 2021)
  • The Parish Review – International Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies (Paul Fagan)
  • The Vienna Centre for Irish Studies
  • The Vienna Irish Studies and Cultural Theory Summer School: “The Irish Carnivalesque” (July 2017); “Stage Irishness” (July 2018); “Bull Island” – The Nonhuman Turn in Irish Studies (July 2019)