Ruth is Emeritus Distinguished Professor at Lancaster University. She is also affiliated to the University of Vienna where she was recently PI of a 3-year research project (2015-2018) on the "Discursive Construction of National Identity - Austria 2015" (see https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/en/uniview/forschung/detailansicht/artikel/wie-oesterreicherinnen-gemacht-werden/; http://pf.fwf.ac.at/de/wissenschaft-konkret/project-finder/33284). The book based on this project Identitäten im Wandel (with R. de Cillia, Markus Rheindorf, and Sabine Lehner) was published 2020, with Springer (Berlin). She is continuing to supervise one PhD student at University Vienna.
2016, Ruth spent three months as Distinguished Schuman Fellow at the EUI, Florence. 2017 she held the Willi Brandt Chair (Visiting Professorship) at Malmö University, Sweden (
In the fall 2018, she was awarded the Lebenswerk Preis (Prize for Life Achievements) from the Austrian Ministry of Women's Affairs. March 12, 2020, she became Honorary Member of the Senate of the University Vienna. In July 2020, she was awarded her second honorary doctorate from Warwick University. The ceremony had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis. in June 2021, Ruth was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for her lifetime achievements (publications and research [publizistisches Gesamtwerk];(https://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20210101_OTS0017/bruno-kreisky-…); this was announced January 1, 2021.
In 2020, she was senior visiting fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaft des Menschen (IWM) (http://www.iwm.at/) in Vienna until October 2020, where she worked with Dr Markus Rheindorf on a new project about 'repolitizisation from below'. The second revised and extended edition of her monograph The Politics of Fear: The shameless normalization of far-right populist discourses (Sage) ( https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/the-politics-of-fear/book265617) was published October 28, 2020, the German translation Politik mit der Angst. Die schamlose Normalisierung rechtsextremen und rechtspopulistischen Diskurses (Konturen) (https://www.konturen.cc/buecher/politik-mit-der-angst/) was published September 29, 2020.
The volume Identity Politics Past and Present. Political Discourses from Post-War Austria to the Covid Crisis. (2022, University of Exeter Press), co-authored by Ruth and Markus Rheindorf, was published in March 2022 (see https://www.exeterpress.co.uk/en/Book/2110/Identity-Politics-Past-and-P…; for more information). The book was launched on-line in April, in a panel discussion moderated by Professor Richard Mole (UCL). Professor Birgit Sauer (Vienna University) and Professor Jo Angouri (Warwick University) were discussants (see https://youtu.be/rXFwXJ1LLHc for the entire book presentation).
https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/linguistics/about/people/ruth-wodak