In recent years, Luka Vidmar has focused on five themes in his interdisciplinary research, through which he has shed light on the literary and cultural development in Slovenia between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries: the tradition of Protestant literature, literary censorship, secular drama, baroque novel and travelogue, and the Enlightenment and national revival. Vidmar has reconstructed the attitude of Slovenian and other European intellectuals towards the grammar of the Slovenian language, published in 1584 by Adam Bohorič, and proven a direct connection between the Protestant and Catholic concepts of the Slovenian Christian community. He has discussed the influence of censorship on literary culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and reviewed the beginnings of Slovenian secular drama and theatre. He has presented important works of Carniolan Baroque literature in German ‒ the translation of Pallavicinoʼs novel La rete di Vulcano, published in 1669 by Baron Franz von Wützenstein, and the manuscript Diarium, in which Franciscan Sigismundus Skerpin described his journey from Ljubljana to Valladolid in 1740. He has discussed Sigismund Zoisʼs influence on the Austrian and French administrative and school reforms at the beginning of the nineteenth century, reconstructed his collection of Slovenian and Slavic books, and analysed the preaching activity of Zoisʼs contemporary, Valentin Vodnik.

Vidmarʼs publications are based on analyses of unknown or unexplored primary sources, such as Vodnikʼs list of sermons, and on original comparative analyses, such as the analysis of Roman and Vienna indices of prohibited books. By combining methods of literary, cultural and art history, they strive to reconstruct the historical context of literary works and other cultural phenomena and to protect the written cultural heritage represented by eary-modern manuscripts and rare prints that are held in Slovenian libraries, especially the Zois library at the National and University Library in Ljubljana.

Ed.: Zois: študije. Ljubljana: Založba ZRC, 2025.

Co-ed. (w. Marijan Dović): Habsburg Censorship and Literature in the Slovenian Lands (= Slavica TerGestina 26.1 [2021]).

(W. Aleš Gabrič, Jernej Kosi and Peter Štih:) Temelji slovenstva. Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 2019.

(W. Sonja Svoljšak:) In vendar so jih brali: prepovedane knjige na Slovenskem v zgodnjem novem veku iz zbirke Narodne in univerzitetne knjižnice / And Yet They Read Them: Banned Books in Slovenia in the Early Modern Age from the National and University Library Collection. Ljubljana: NUK, 2018.

A Slavic Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Jernej Kopitar and Baron Žiga Zois. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2016.

Ljubljana kot novi Rim: Akademija operozov in baročna Italija. Ljubljana: SAZU, 2013.

The Roman and Viennese Indices of Prohibited Books in Austrian and Bohemian Lands under Maria Theresa. Neohelicon 50.2 (2023): 509–25.

Secularization of Book Censorship under Maria Theresa: Between Catholic Tradition and Moderate Enlightenment. Slavica TerGestina 26.1 (2021): 144–70.

The Slovenes between the Illyrian Provinces and the Kingdom of Illyria. In: The Congress of Ljubljana 1821. Ed. Andrej Rahten and Gregor Antoličič. Klagenfurt: Mohorjeva; Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU Milko Kos Historical Institute; Mengeš: Centre for European Perspective, 2021. 31–42.

Josef Strzygowski und seine Doktoranden Avguštin Stegenšek und Avgust Žigon. In: Gemeinsamkeit auf getrennten Wegen: die slowenischen Doktoranden der Grazer Philosophischen Fakultät im Zeitraum 1876–1918 und die Gründung der Universität in Ljubljana. Ed. Alois Kernbauer and Tone Smolej. Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 2021. 239–61.

Antoni Gaudí and Jože Plečnik: Two Architects on the Path from Cultural Canonization to Catholic Beatification. In: Great Immortality: Studies on European Cultural Sainthood. Ed. Jón Karl Helgason and Marijan Dović. Leiden: Brill, 2019. 313–30.

Ferrante Pallavicino in Carniola. In: Les régions slovènes entre XVIII^e et XIX^e siècles. Ed. François Bouchard and Patrizia Farinelli. Paris: Le Manuscrit, 2019. 263–86.

Kopitar, Jernej. In: Encyclopedia of Romantic Nationalism in Europe. Ed. Joep Leerssen. Amsterdam: Huizinga Instituut, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2017. N. pag.

• The Beginnings of Slovenian Secular Drama and Theatre (1670‒1848) (fundamental research project • October 1, 2023 - September 30, 2026)
• Slovenian Writers and Imperial Censorship in the Long Nineteenth Century (fundamental research project • September 1, 2020 - August 31, 2023)
• Forbidden Books in Slovenian Lands in the Early Modern Age (applied research project • January 1, 2016 - December 31, 2018)
• History of Doctoral Dissertations by Slovene Candidates in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1872–1918) (interdisciplinary project • January 1, 2016 - December 31, 2018)
• Unexplored Latin and German Literature in the Slovenian Lands in the Baroque Period (postdoctoral research project • July 1, 2011 - June 30, 2013)

Teaching

• Postgraduate School ZRC SAZU, doctoral programme Comparative Study of Ideas and Cultures, module Literature in Context, course Literature and the Visual Arts
• University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Deparment of Slovene Studies, course Cultural History (course facilitator)

Awards and recognitions

• The Zois Award (2025)
• The Izidor Cankar Award (2019)
• Prometheus of Science for Excellence in Science Communication (2019)
• Advocate of Special Libraries (2017)
• The Silver Sign of ZRC SAZU (2011)
• The Zois scholarship (1995–2001)