Projects


EU Horizon MSCA on Computational Analysis of Semantic Change Across Different Environments (CASCADE)
Official website: https://www.horizoncascade.net/

In CASCADE I collaborate with James O’Sullivan from University College Cork Ireland, Dirk Spee Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Belgium, Mikko Tolonen from Helsingin Yliopisto Finland and 9 partners throughout Europe.
We aim to train early-stage researchers to develop and apply innovative methodologies for Computational Analysis of Semantic Change Across Different Environments (CASCADE), i.e. to identify, analyse and interrogate how meaning is expressed in language in diverse contexts, with a shared focus on the impact of time (diachronic text analytics). CASCADE responds to a skills deficit within the academic, public and commercial sectors: the need for people able to retrieve, critically evaluate and make better use of the large volumes of textual data that characterize our contemporary information society (the ‘data deluge’), thus directly contributing to empowering Digital Humanists.

Funded by Horizon Europe under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Doctoral Networks and the UKRO.

Team: Sofía Aguilar and Anastasiia Vestel

Information Density in Englisch Scientific Writing: A Diachronic Perspective (SFB1102, B1)
I’m a Principal Investigator with Elke Teich in the Collaborative Research Center (SFB 1102) Information Density and Linguistic Encoding for Project B1, where we investigate register formation and linguistic densification in the evolution of scientific writing in English (17th century to present)


Team: Diego Alves and Isabell Landwehr.

Individual Predispositions and Language use
As part of an interdisciplinary research project, we are investigating how differences in sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) influence communicative patterns, language adaptation processes, and interaction processes.
Virtual reality environments (MetaQuest3) are used to experimentally manipulate environmental conditions (e.g., light, background noise) and social stimuli (e.g., friendly vs. unfriendly conversation partners).

 
Team: Marc Simon and Baktahir Hussain

Previous projects:

Project: Overcoming the computational hurdle and exploiting opportunities for humanities students in linguistic research for the Digital Humanities (DH) with Chat-GPT
I’ve received funding (April 2023 – March 2024) from the Data-Pin project „Innovative use of AI in education“ to exploit how AI-Systems such as ChatGPT can be used for programming tasks and beyond by humanities students. With my Research Assistant Sergei Bagdasarov, we design teaching modules for programming tasks and statistical analysis using R and Python.

I received funding from Saarland University (2021-2022) with my colleague Francesca Delogu to work on Impact of register and sociolinguistic factors on textual coherence. We combine corpus-based and experimental approaches to investigate how social factors (e.g. expert knowledge in a domain) may affect comprehension. We assume that the use of cohesive devices in a text highly depends on (a) a text’s function in a situational context, i.e. the register (e.g. narrative vs expository texts), and (b) social factors, e.g. the comprehender’s age, education or expertise in a particular domain.

Previously to this, I had received UdS funding to investigate Linguistic Profiles of Social Variables in Diachrony (SLingPro). To observe possible linguistic profiles of social variables in diachrony my team and I have used the Old Bailey Corpus (Huber et al., 2016) — a digital collection of spoken texts based on the proceedings of the London’s central criminal court from the 18th and 19th century, which is annotated for social variables such as age, gender, and social class.

In my PhD I focused on combining macro- and micro-analytical methods for register analysis on evaluative language (PhD Thesis).