Seminars by guest professors
The ViDSS strengthens education and international networking of doctoral candidates by organising seminars, lectures and workshops with international scholars from outside the University of Vienna. The seminars are part of the regular course programme offered in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences.
Summer semester of 2026
New methods to study discrimination: From LLMs to experiments
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
8–12 June 2026
This course explores cutting-edge approaches to understanding bias and inequality, with a focus on visual methodologies. Building on foundational tools like Implicit Association Tests (IATs), text conjoint analysis, and vignette experiments, the course introduces advanced techniques, including the use of large language models (LLMs) and experimental designs leveraging visual stimuli. Students will critically evaluate traditional and emerging methods, comparing their strengths and limitations in studying discrimination across contexts. Drawing on the instructor’s expertise and prior work, the course emphasises the integration of visuals in experimental research, offering practical training in designing and analysing studies. Designed for scholars across social science disciplines, this course equips participants with innovative tools to investigate bias and inequality, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and methodological rigor.
For more information please visit the course directory.
Rachel Bernhard
Associate Professor at the University of Oxford
Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Government
From structures to stories: Discourse ethnography and the study of intersectionality
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
18–22 May 2026
This course introduces social science students to the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD) in combination with (digital) ethnographic approaches. SKAD offers a robust theoretical and methodological framework that combines insights from the sociology of knowledge with discourse analysis, providing tools to investigate how knowledge, meaning, and “truths” are socially constructed through discourse within specific historical, institutional, and cultural contexts. Grounded in the foundational work of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann and engaging with Michel Foucault’s concept of discourse, SKAD focuses on how actors produce, negotiate, and legitimise knowledge claims within discourse arenas. The course explores how these claims come to be seen as authoritative, and how they shape understandings of social problems, identity, and policy discourses. Students will examine how power relations, institutional structures, and cultural dynamics influence discursive formations, using case studies related to intersectionality and diversity.
For more information please visit the course directory.
Babette Kirchner
Research Fellow at the University of Bremen
Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Sociology
Contact
babette.kirchner@sport.uni-goettingen.de
uni-bremen.de
Theories and methods of political economy
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
10 March–16 June 2026
This seminar will survey foundational frameworks in international and comparative political economy, including but not limited to State-Centric Realism, the French Regulation School, Varieties of Capitalism, and Polanyian and Post-Keynesian approaches. We will foreground substantive domains central to contemporary political economy, especially debates surrounding the rise of digital capitalism and the platform firm, alongside the turn to culture and the political economy of everyday life. Building on foundational contributions and current debates, we will examine the disciplinary status of political economy as a social-scientific field and its relationship to theory and method.
For more information please visit the course directory.
Besnik Pula
Associate Professor at Virginia Tech
University of Vienna Visiting Professor of Social Sciences at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Political Science
Contact
bpula@vt.edu
vt.edu
Power, dependencies and spheres of control in the AI age
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
11–19 May 2026
How did we arrive at a world in which a handful of megacorporations from the United States – and to a lesser extent, from China – control the production and use of the technologies that define contemporary capitalism? How does this transformation affect the digital peripheries: Latin America, Africa, and even Europe? This course will explore why traditional frameworks that associate power with property and territory, and innovation with progress, cannot help us to answer these questions. By using and explaining how to construct networks, clustering and text mining analyses, and integrating insights from diverse disciplines – socioeconomics, international political economy, science and technology studies, media studies, geopolitics and development studies –, this course will offer students an opportunity to learn about dependencies in digital capitalism. Among other questions, we will explore AI value chains including scientific research and paying special attention to the politics and ecological impact of digital infrastructure.
For more information please visit the course directory.
Corporate power, geopolitics and sovereignty in the Age of AI and the Cloud
IPW Lecture
11 May 2026, 18:00–19:30
Lecture Room II, ground floor, NIG, Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna
Cecilia Rikap
Associate Professor at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, University College London
Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Political Science
Time and temporality in social science
Methods seminar in the doctoral programme in Social Sciences
14–21 April 2026
Time quietly organises social life. It shapes what is considered urgent, what can be deferred, and what appears inevitable. Yet in much research it is treated as a neutral backdrop – a simple matter of ‘before’ and ‘after’, a linear story of change, or a set of natural categories. In practice, however, time is never neutral. Institutions and practices actively produce temporalities: deadlines, indicators, long-term visions, and life-course categories make some problems appear pressing, postpone others, and shape how people understand themselves and their place in society. At the same time, time is experienced unevenly. Chrononormative life paths and social positions determine whose time is valued, accelerated, or deferred, reinforcing inequality and exclusion. Recognising these multiple and unequal temporalities opens up new questions about how power is organised and contested in social life. This doctoral training course introduces methodological strategies for analysing temporality. Students will learn how to integrate temporal perspectives into their own research using approaches such as process tracing, discourse analysis, ethnographies of futures, and narrative or biographical methods.
For more information please visit the course directory.
Timing gender: How time constructs the gendered subject
Public Lecture
15 April 2026, 17:00–18:30
Department of Sociology, Rooseveltplatz 2, Seminar room 3
Emily St.Denny
Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen
Paul Lazarsfeld Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Vienna, Department of Sociology