The project is devoted to the study of the Greek manuscripts preserved in Austrian libraries, mainly the Austrian National Library. In a first step, Herbert Hunger in collaboration with Otto Kresten, Wolfgang Lackner and Christian Hannick catalogued in the years 1953–1994 the central stock of around 1000 manuscripts according to state-of-the-art criteria, which provided the basis for further European catalogue projects of Greek manuscripts. The most recent supplementary volume is the catalogue of the Greek fragments collection, currently being prepared for publication by Christian Gastgeber. Further work on the manuscripts focuses on questions of provenance and Byzantine reading practices (connected with aspects of prosopographical paleography).

As regards the provenance, individual groups of manuscripts are explored under the following respects: the creation of collections in the transalpine region, where Greek manuscripts were arrived only by means of imports (the stock of the Viennese court library before the acquisition of big collections by humanists from abroad; first catalogue of the entire stock of newly acquired humanist collections by Sebastian Tengnagel); transfer of collection units from an specific local environment (library of Ogier Ghislain de Busbecq, who acquired his collection in Constantinople in the 16th century, though only a few manuscripts were actually written in this area).

The research focus is part of a cooperation project with the Division Schrift- & Buchwesen of the Institute for Medieval Research (ÖAW), the Austrian National Library, Department of manuscripts and incunabula and the Budapest Széchényi Library, Department of manuscripts to study the manuscripts from the property of Matthias Corvinus in the Austrian National Library.

This research is accompanied by paleographic and codiological studies.