CIRDIS was established at the University of Vienna in January 2006 as an inter-faculty platform for innovative research in Inner and South Asian studies. This institution was conceived and directed from its inception up to 2015 by emer. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Deborah Klimburg-Salter (holder of the Chair for Non-European Art History from 1996 – 2013). From its beginning it was closely linked with the Western Himalaya Archive of Vienna (WHAV). The initial application for CIRDIS as a research platform and its renewal applications underwent a blind international reviewing process.
CIRDIS was conceived as a unit for documentation, research as well as teaching, and so the supported programmes were diverse and ranged from archiving field materials to university-based teaching courses, doctoral colleges, translational projects for preservation, and training programmes for young professionals to individual lectures, workshops, round tables, and specialised conferences.
The previous website of CIRDIS is no longer updated but will remain available as a documentation of our past work at http://www.univie.ac.at/cirdis/2006-2015.
The new Research Center, under the direction of Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Gaenszle since April 2015, builds on the previous activities of CIRDIS and continues the integration of innovative primary research with recent developments in the fields of digital archiving, computer science and geography, as well as expands the established networks across disciplines and institutions within Austria and internationally to develop new methodological models for the humanities.