Vienna Cognitive Science Hub

The Vienna Cognitive Science Hub was a research network at the University of Vienna, active from 2011 to March 2026. It connected researchers across cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience from six faculties, providing a shared framework for interdisciplinary research, joint projects, and public engagement.

The Hub brought together more than 40 Network Associates — faculty members and researchers working across psychology, computer science, linguistics, philosophy, art history, cognitive biology, neuroscience, and musicology. Affiliated researchers were distributed across the faculties of Psychology; Computer Science; Philological and Cultural Studies; Historical and Cultural Studies; Life Sciences; and Philosophy and Education. Several researchers from partner institutions, including the Medical University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, were also part of the network.

The network was held together by a shared empirical approach to studying mind, brain, and behaviour. Researchers used and frequently combined a broad range of methods: eye-tracking, statistical modelling, EEG, fMRI, brain stimulation (TMS and tDCS), virtual reality, and field studies.

Between 2011 and 2026, the Hub was involved in 25 funded research projects, attracting €12.7 million in third-party funding from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), Horizon Europe, and other national and international agencies.

Research topics ranged from empirical aesthetics and neuroaesthetics to language processing, cognitive biology, clinical neuroscience, and the cognitive dimensions of urban environments. Affiliated researchers produced 1,045 scientific publications over the fifteen-year period.

The Hub's most visible public activity was the Future Thinking lecture series — an open, interdisciplinary programme bringing researchers from across the university to address questions at the intersection of cognitive science and contemporary society. Topics included predictive processing, artificial intelligence, political emotion, cultural change, and neurodivergence. Recordings of selected lectures are available on this website.