A new publication in Health explores how healthcare professionals working on COVID-19 wards experienced and navigated the pandemic. 

Based on qualitative interviews, the study examines functionality as a mode of coping, as well as institutional coping and professional identity under extreme conditions. 

Centred on the legacy of Otto Mühl and the former Friedrichshof commune, this new FWF-funded research project, led by Mag. Paul Julien Robert-Anxionnaz (Institute for Fine Arts) and Prof. Elisabeth Schäfer (Faculty of Psychotherapy Science), brings together artistic research and psychotherapy science. 

Exploring the fragile traces left behind by disappearance and destruction, the project addresses questions of memory, access, and the preservation of contested histories. 

It is an empirical research initiative investigating the spacio-temporal dynamics of psychoanalytical processes and is being conducted in cooperation with researchers from the Medical School Hamburg as well as the Institut für Philosophie, Psychoanalyse, Kulturwissenschaften (IPPK) in Berlin.

The contributions were produced collaboratively under the lead of Dr. Lisa Winter, Mag. Stella Becher-Urbaniak (Psychotherapeutic Outpatient Clinic for Adults), and Dr. Birgitta Schiller (Head of the Institute for Qualitative Psychotherapy Research).

What does it mean for experiences to become “extreme”?  

As a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at Ritsumeikan University in Japan, Ass.-Prof. Dominik Mihalits of the Faculty of Psychology investigates how people navigate intense experiences and how these relate to well-being, identity and psychological strain. The project also sheds light on the role of cultural self-regulation in shaping such experiences. 

Japan provides a unique setting for this research, where long-standing traditions of discipline, endurance and aesthetic refinement coexist with the pressures and possibilities of hyper-modern urban life. 

Ass.-Prof. Nora Ruck, vice dean for research at the Faculty of Psychology, and vice rector for research, Prof. Marion Garaus, have been appointed co-chairs of the newly established Austrian CoARA Chapter.  

The appointment reflects the faculty’s as well as SFU's active role in advancing CoARA principles, particularly in reforming research assessment and promoting more diverse and inclusive evaluation criteria across academia.

How do culture and society shape the way we think, feel and act?  

In their new book, Prof. Gerhard Benetka and Natalie Rodax, PhD, of the Faculty of Psychology examine psychology from a cultural studies perspective, connecting insights from psychology, history and sociology while demonstrating how theoretical concepts can be translated into empirical research.

Organ transplantation is one of the most sensitive areas of health law, raising complex legal, ethical and societal questions.  

A new interdisciplinary commentary edited by Karin Bruckmüller of the Faculty of Law, together with colleagues from the Universities of Vienna and Innsbruck as well as UMIT, provides fresh insights into Austria’s Organ Transplantation Act and the challenges surrounding this medically and socially important field. 

In a new review article published in the renowned journal Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, an international research team including SFU researcher Henrik Bischoff proposes a neurobiological model suggesting that, under certain conditions, affective touch may be understood as a distinct form of embodied memory formation. It would leave partly consciously accessible and partly implicit traces that shape our sense of safety, attachment, and trust throughout life. 

Dr. Mahdi Mahmoudi, assistant professor of biostatistics at the Clinical Competence Center (3C), has been honoured with the 3^rd place Best Abstract Award in Clinical Research at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the Austrian Society of Cardiology (ÖKG). 

We warmly congratulate Dr. Mahmoudi and his co-authors on this achievement and well-deserved recognition! 

Learn more about the study and its insights into two decades of cardiovascular health trends in the full news article.