He has taught as Professor of West Slavic Linguistics at the University of Vienna since 2004 and has been Full Member (Fellow) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences since 2018.

He took his PhD (1998) at this very university with his doctoral thesis on diglossia in the school system of the Czech-speaking crown lands of the Habsburg Empire (1740–1918) featuring the West Bohemian district town of Plzeň.

From 2000 to 2003 he was employed in a research project of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) on linguistic contacts between Czech, Slovak and German, which he completed with his postdoctoral thesis (habilitation) on German loanwords in Czech and Slovak, highlighting their historical development, giving their first evidence in literature and presenting previous and new etymologies for them.

Variation – Contact – Perception",[9] and together with Roman Krivko and Fedor Poljakov on the international joint project "Slavic studies in exchange: Austria and Russia in 1849–1939".

[17] On 30 November 2024, in the King John III Sobieski Hall of the Scientific Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) in Vienna-Landstraße, Newerkla was awarded the jubilee badge commemorating the 130th anniversary of the Association of Poles in Austria ‘Strzecha’.