Career
His area of expertise is the history of the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages. Pohl is director of the Institut für Mittelalterforschung (Institute for Middle Ages Research) () of the Austrian Academy of Sciences as well as a university professor of history of the Middle Ages and historical subsidiary sciences at the historical-culture-scientific faculty at the University of Vienna. In the year 2004 he was awarded the Wittgenstein-Preis.
Since the summer 2002 he is an Austrian representative in the Committee for the Humanities of the European Science Foundation (European Social Fund) as well as delegates in the general assembly of the European Social Fund. His main areas of research include (among other things):
Conversion of the Roman world and the realms of the early Middle Ages (see Late Antiquity)
Ethnic processes and identities between ancient and the Middle Ages
The Migration Period and other migrations.
Historiography
Early medieval law books
History of the steppe peoples
History and culture history of Italy until around 1000
He has written many encyclopedia articles in German and English.