Oliver Vitouch

Oliver Vitouch (born April 4, 1971 in Vienna) is an Austrian psychologist and cognitive scientist.[1] He has served as Rector of the University of Klagenfurt since 2012, and as Vice-President and President, respectively, of Universities Austria since 2016.

Oliver Vitouch
Rector of the University of Klagenfurt
Assumed office
Oct 29, 2012
Preceded byHeinrich C. Mayr
Vice-President of Universities Austria
Assumed office
Jan 1, 2016
Preceded byGerald Bast
President of Universities Austria
In office
June 6, 2016 – Dec 31, 2017
Preceded bySonja Hammerschmid
Succeeded byEva Blimlinger
In office
July 1, 2019 – Dec 31, 2019
Preceded byEva Blimlinger
Succeeded bySabine Seidler
Personal details
Born (1971-04-04) 4 April 1971
Vienna
NationalityAustrian
Spouse(s)Judith Glück
ChildrenJonas, Lena
Alma materUniversity of Vienna
Scientific career
FieldsCognition
Institutions
Websitehttps://www.aau.at

Academic biography

Vitouch attended high school at the Akademisches Gymnasium Vienna from 1981 to 1989, and studied music at the Vienna Conservatory from 1986 to 1992. At the University of Vienna, he studied psychology (with a focus on human biology and cognitive neuroscience), receiving a master of science degree in 1995 and a doctor of science in 1999. He was a pre-doctoral assistant at the University of Vienna from 1995, and a research scientist at Gerd Gigerenzer's Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (ABC) at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin from 2000 to 2002, and has been teaching at the Free University of Berlin and the University of St. Gallen. After his habilitation in psychology, he became associate professor at the University of Vienna in 2002 and was appointed full professor of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Klagenfurt in 2003.

Presidencies

From 2005 to 2006, Vitouch was head of the Department of Psychology, and from 2006 to 2012, Chairman of the University's Senate (re-elected thrice). He served as Member of the Board (2004–2006) and President (2008–2010) of the Austrian Psychological Association. In this capacity, he contributed significantly to the implementation of university admission laws (Art. 124b, now Art. 71c, of the Austrian Universities Act) in consequence of the 2005 judgement of the European Court of Justice[2] decreeing open access to Austrian universities also for German students.

Oliver Vitouch took office as Rector of the University of Klagenfurt in October 2012. He has been re-elected for a second four-year term (2016–2020) in May 2015, and for a third term (2020–2024) in May 2019.

From January 2015 to May 2016, he was in charge as President of the Alps-Adriatic Rectors’ Conference (AARC), a society founded 1979 in Graz with currently 49 member universities from Austria, Southern Germany, Hungary, Upper Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Albania.[3] His successor in this role was Dragan Marušič. Since January 2016, he served as Vice-President and from June 2016 to December 2017 as President (after Sonja Hammerschmid's change into federal government) of Universities Austria, the association of Austria's 22 federal research universities.[4][5] He was chiefly involved into the enactment of Austria’s new system of university funding (Art. 141 to 141c and 71a to 71d of the Austrian Universities Act). Not running for another term as President, he is active as Vice-President again since January 2018,[6][7] and has served as Acting President in the second half of 2019.[8][9]

On June 9, 2016, a group of identitarians invaded a lecture on inclusion at the University of Klagenfurt.[10][11][12][13][14] Aiming to keep hold of the squad leader until the police arrives, Vitouch was punched in the stomach. The offender was convicted of aggravated assault on July 12, 2019 by the criminal court in Graz.[15]

As Vice-President of Universities Austria, Vitouch was significantly involved into the emergence of the initiative Universities for Enlightenment (U4E), sustained by the Rectors' Conferences of Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Switzerland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.[16] This was triggered by the expulsion of the Central European University by the Hungarian government, the governmental reorganization of Hungarian Universities, and the government/university conflicts in Poland and the Czech Republic. The ten Rectors' Conferences signed the "Vienna Statement" in December 2018.[17][18]

Media activities

From November 2017 to January 2020, Vitouch wrote for the column Außensicht (German for "outer view") of Kleine Zeitung, Austria's largest regional daily. Earlier, he had sporadically contributed to the op-ed page (Kommentar der anderen) of Der Standard since 1996. His main topics were higher education, science, and Enlightenment.

Selected bibliography
  • Vitouch, O., & Glück, J. (1997). "Small group PETting:" Sample sizes in brain mapping research. Human Brain Mapping, 5, 74–77.
  • (2001). When your ear sets the stage: Musical context effects in film perception. Psychology of Music, 29, 70–83.
  • Neumeister, A., Konstantinidis, A., Stastny, J., Schwarz, M. J., Vitouch, O., Willeit, M., Praschak-Rieder, N., Zach, J., de Zwaan, M., Bondy, B., Ackenheil, M., & Kasper, S. (2002). Association between serotonin transporter gene promoter polymorphism (5HTTLPR) and behavioral responses to tryptophan depletion in healthy women with and without family history of depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 59, 613–620.
  • (2003). Absolutist models of absolute pitch are absolutely misleading. Music Perception, 21, 111–117.
  • Gigerenzer, G., Krauss, S., & Vitouch, O. (2004). The null ritual: What you always wanted to know about significance testing but were afraid to ask. In D. Kaplan (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences (pp. 391–408). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  • Hanoch, Y., & Vitouch, O. (2004). When less is more: Information, emotional arousal and the ecological reframing of the Yerkes-Dodson law. Theory & Psychology, 14, 427–452.
  • (2006). The musical mind: Neural tuning and the aesthetic experience. In P. B. Baltes, P. Reuter-Lorenz & F. Rösler (Eds.), Lifespan development and the brain: The perspective of biocultural co-constructivism (pp. 217–236). New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Vitouch, O., & Ladinig, O. (Eds.) (2009). Music and evolution. Musicae Scientiae, 13 (Special Issue 2009–2010, 445 pp.).
  • Marewski, J., Pohl, R., & Vitouch, O. (Eds.) (2010/11). Recognition processes in inferential decision making (I–III). Special Issue, Judgment and Decision Making, 5 (4), 6 (1) & 6 (5).
  • Marewski, J., Pohl, R., & Vitouch, O. (2011). Recognition-based judgments and decisions: What we have learned (so far). Judgment and Decision Making, 6, 359–380.
  • Martignon, L., Vitouch, O., Takezawa, M., & Forster, M. R. (2011). Naive and yet enlightened: From natural frequencies to fast and frugal decision trees. In G. Gigerenzer, R. Hertwig & T. Pachur (Eds.), Heuristics: The foundations of adaptive behavior (pp. 136–150). New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Koreimann, S., Gula, B., & Vitouch, O. (2014). Inattentional deafness in music. Psychological Research, 78, 304–312.

References
  1. Oliver Vitouch publications indexed by Google Scholar
  2. "Commission of the European Communities v Republic of Austria: Conditions of access to university education". European Court of Justice. July 7, 2005. Retrieved 28 Dec 2018.
  3. "Members of the Alps-Adriatic Rectors' Conference (AARC)". Retrieved 1 Jul 2020.
  4. "Scharfzüngiger Kritiker als neuer Rektorenchef". Die Presse. June 7, 2016. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  5. "Akademische Turbokarriere mit Musiknote (Kopf des Tages)". Der Standard. June 7, 2016. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  6. "Eva Blimlinger ist neue Rektorenchefin". Die Presse. Dec 11, 2017. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  7. "Vitouch warnt vor 'Medizin-Fleckerlteppich' (Abschiedsinterview als Präsident der Universitätenkonferenz)". Die Presse. Dec 6, 2017. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  8. "Neue Vorsitzende für ÖH und Universitätenkonferenz". APA Science. June 24, 2019. Retrieved 24 Jun 2019.
  9. "uniko-Vorsitz: Vitouch folgt auf Blimlinger". APA-OTS. July 1, 2019. Retrieved 2 Jul 2019.
  10. "Letzte Zeugen im Identitären-Prozess vernommen". Die Presse. July 24, 2018. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  11. "Identitären-Prozess: Letzte Fragerunde mit den Angeklagten". Der Standard. July 25, 2018. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  12. "Identitären-Prozess: Großteils Freisprüche". ORF. July 26, 2018. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  13. "Identitäre-Prozess: Freisprüche und Geldstrafen". Kurier. July 29, 2018. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  14. "Martin Sellner: The new face of the far right in Europe". BBC. Sep 20, 2018. Retrieved 27 Dec 2018.
  15. "Anhänger der Identitären in Graz zu sechs Monaten bedingt verurteilt". Der Standard. July 12, 2019. Retrieved 14 Jul 2019.
  16. Universities for Enlightenment. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
  17. Vienna Statement. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
  18. "Europas Universitäten wehren sich: Zehn europäische Universitäten-Konferenzen fürchten um die Grundwerte der Aufklärung." Wiener Zeitung. Dec 13, 2018. Retrieved 26 May 2019.
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