Immersed in a sea of words: Poetic metaphors

It’s a familiar situation: We gaze at a poem and wonder – what was the author trying to express? What was his or her intention in using that specific metaphor? And how should we, as readers, interpret it? Over the next two years, Carina Rasse, holder of the DOC-scholarship awarded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and currently working at the Department of English, will explore how metaphors emerge and how they are deciphered by readers.

Language in politics: Why some act the strict father

The communication practised by politicians is highly calculated, supporting their aim to transport their own messages and to sway the voters. Applying a linguistic perspective, Marta Degani has studied speeches by US-American politicians, including election addresses by Barack Obama, but also by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Finding the water bottle, but missing the small weapon: Research on the role of the working memory during hand luggage checks at the airport

Visual search allows humans to identify certain objects: For example, a doctor can recognise dangerous anomalies in x-ray images, or airport security staff can use x-ray technology to identify items inside our hand luggage. At the Department of Psychology, Anna Conci, recipient of an ÖAW-DOC scholarship, is studying the influence of the working memory on the search performance. Read more →

More cyber security for intelligent cameras

To simplify our daily routines, devices designed for the “Internet of Things (IoT)” are usually equipped with cameras that can record images and videos, and transmit these to other devices. Subhan Ullah’s research focuses on increasing the security of these systems, which often have limited processing capacities. He has recently completed his doctoral thesis.