Speaker: Christina Lutter, Walter Pohl (until 2022)

Background: In recent years, several representatives of the faculty have succeeded in acquiring a series of large, collaboratively designed research projects that in turn have numerous thematic overlaps. These projects are represented by the title of the key research area.

The aim of the key research area was and is to bring these projects together and to network them with similar research at the faculty level:

ERC Advanced Grant Social Cohesion, Identity and Religion in Europe (SCIRE, 2011-2016)

SFB 42 Visions of Community. Comparative Approaches to Ethnicity, Region and Empire in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (400-1600 CE) (VISCOM, 2011-2019)

NFN B 93 -G02 Imperium and Officium: The Framework of Imperial Power in Late Antique Egypt (2009-2015)

Wittgenstein Award Project Mobility, Microstructures and Personal Agency in Byzantium (MoByz, 2015-2020)

The common approach of these projects is to consider historical communities and constructions of identity not as the prehistory of today's states or religions, but rather from their respective contexts. At the same time, the aim is to historicise the concepts of community themselves.

The key research area provides the space to link these projects with other research areas and projects. Through cooperation with the Austrian Academy of Sciences's institute for medieval research (IMAFO), there are particularly good opportunities to involve young scientists in joint activities. Due to this initial situation, the structural conditions of the key research area (funding, resources, etc.) are exceptionally favourable, so that further third-party funds (see below) could be acquired, which in turn are used interfaculty to promote young scientists and to expand intra-university and international cooperation.

Between 2011 and 2016, more than 20 international workshops/conferences were held annually in the key research area with the participation of the above-mentioned projects and in cooperation with the involved departments (i.e. a total of around 100 events). In addition, there were numerous publications (see below) in well-known international publishing houses.

Special emphasis was placed on:

1) cross-disciplinary methodological exchange, e.g.

• 2012-2016: International Workshop Series Historiographies of Identity, with Princeton University, ERC Starting Grant Origins of the Vernacular Mode (OVERMODE), PI Pavlina Rychterová, ÖAW, Vienna)
• 2013-2017: International Cooperation with COST Action New Communities of Interpretation: Contexts, Strategies of Religious Transformation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, PI Sabrina Corbellini, Univ. Groningen)
• 2013: International Conference Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe. The Historical Legacy of Bernhard Blumenkranz (IÖG, the Institute for the History of the Jews in Austria, Austrian Academy of Sciences, ERC Advanced Grant The Legal Status of Religious Minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean World (5th-15th centuries), PI: J. Tolan , Univ. Nantes)
• 2016: International conference Monastic Journeys (Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, MoByz, ÖAW, CNRS Paris, Univ. Nantes, Ecole Francaise de Caire)

2) Support for young scholars through numerous diploma, MA and PhD theses, several Marie Curie, Docteam, Lise-Meitner and Charlotte-Bühler scholarships.

3) Intrafaculty and interfaculty exchange, e.g.

• Regular interdisciplinary doctoral seminars (DSPL 41), including with the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences;
• Lecture series: Comparative Visions of Community in Medieval Europe, South Arabia and Tibet

4) At the faculty level, the key research area is linked with other key research areas in terms of personnel and content, particularly: Historical and Cultural European Studies, Austria in its Environment, Women's and Gender History; Text and Scholarly Editing.