Curriculum Vitae
Personal Information
| Date of birth | December 29th, 1972 |
| Place of birth | Cologne (Germany) |
Academic Work Experience
| since 04/2014 | Professor of Linguistics (tenured) at the Department for Romance Languages at the University of Cologne |
| 04/2013 - 03/2014 | Professor of Linguistics (tenured) at the Department for Romance Languages at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin |
| 09/2012 - 03/2013 | Professor of Linguistics (tenured) at the Department of General Linguistics at the University of Strasbourg |
| 04/2012 - 08/2012 | Visiting professor of Linguistics at the Department for Romance Languages at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin |
| 04/2010 - 03/2012 | Visiting professor of Linguistics at the Department for Romance Languages at the University of Freiburg |
| 10/2007 - 03/2010 | Visiting professor of Linguistics at the Department for Romance Languages at the University of Hamburg |
| 08/2007 - 10/2007 | Researcher, ZAS Berlin, subproject P11 (Questions & Answers) |
| 02/2007 - 07/2007 | Reintegration fellowship of the DFG, ZAS Berlin |
| 11/2004 - 01/2007 | Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the German Research Foundation DFGat New York University. Coordination of the project A variationist study on interrogative word order variants of French and Persian |
| 05/2000 - 10/2004 | Research Associate, University of Tübingen (Germany), Research Center Linguistic Data Structures, subproject “Suboptimal Syntactic Structures”. |
Education and Training
| 08/2011 | Habilitation, University of Freiburg Title of the work: "Gradient Acceptability and Frequency Effects in Information Structure: a quantitative study on Spanish, Catalan, and Persian" |
| 10/2000 -07/2003 (officially awarded in 10/2004 after book publication) | Ph.D. in Romance Linguistics, Eberhard-Karls University Tübingen (Germany), grade: summa cum laude Dissertation title: “Grammatische Variation und Sozialstruktur” |
| 10/1998 -11/2000 | Diploma in Psychology (equivalent to M.A.), University of Bonn (Germany) |
| 10/1994 -06/1998 | Double degrees, Linguistics and Psychology, University of Toulouse 2 (France) a. Maîtrise in Linguistics (equivalent to M.A.) |
| 10/1993 - 09/1994 | Psychology, 1st year, University of Bonn (Germany) |
| 11/1992 - 07/1993 | French Language Course, Alliance Française, Toulouse (France), result: Diplôme de Langue Française |
Other Academic Activities
| 01/2024-12/2026 | Representative of subject group 5 in the research committee of Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne |
| 08/2023 - 09/2024 | Executive director of subject group 5 of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne |
| since 2018 | Participation in the structures of the International Office of the University of Cologne for the intensification of the university cooperation with Iran |
| 10/2017 - 03/2018 | Executive director of subject group 5 of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Cologne |
| 02/2017 - 03/2017 | External member of the appointment committee W1 - Romance Linguistics of the Goethe University Frankfurt |
| 07/2016 | Peer reviewer for Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft |
| since 2016 | Member of the Rectorate Commission for Information and Communication of the University of Cologne |
| 2016 - 2018 | Board member of the Cologne Center of Language Sciences (CCLS) |
| 04/2016 - 03/2017 | Executive director of the Department of Romance Studies of the University of Cologne |
| 2016 - 2017 | One of four initiators for grant application for cluster of excellence Choice in Expression |
| 06/2015 | Founding of the Sociolinguistic Lab |
| since 2015 | Public relations for the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Sounds and Structure in Language and Music in the context of the SFB 1252, the Sociolinguistic Lab and as a representative of the internationally positioned science of the University of Cologne (see below) |
| 2014 | Peer reviewer for the journal Linguistics |
| 2013 - 2017 | Coordination of the Cologne-Berlin Register Group. In collaboration with Anke Lüdeling. (Application for the establishment of a research group, rejected in 2015) |
| 2012 - 2013 | Member of the Linguistics selection committee, University of Strasbourg |
| 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011 | Peer reviewer for the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition |
| 2011 | Panel chair at the conference Variation and Typology, Helsinki |
| 2010 | Reviewer for Research Grant Proposals submitted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) |
| 2009 | Reviewer for the journal Language Variation and Change |
| 2008 | Peer reviewer for the journal Lingua |
| since 2005 | Member of the program committee (2005), abstract reviewer (2005-2011), and panel chair (2007) for the conference New Ways of Analyzing Variation |
International Research Visits
| since 03/2022 | Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California |
| 02/2019 - 03/2019 | Department of Linguistics, New York University |
| 04/2018 - 06/2018 | Department of Linguistics, University of Tehran |
| 01/2015 - 03/2015 | Department of Linguistics, New York University |
| 11/2014 | Department of Linguistics, University of Tehran |
| 09/2011 | Department of Linguistics, University of Isfahan |
| 09/2008 | Department of Linguistics, University of Barcelona |
| 08/2008 | Department of Linguistics, New York University |
| 11/2004 - 01/2007 | Department of Linguistics, New York University |
| 06/2005 - 08/2005 | Department of Linguistics, Sorbonne-Nouvelle – Paris III |
| 12/2004 - 02/2005 | Department of Linguistics, Allameh Tabatabai University Tehran |
| 10/2001 - 12/2001 | Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona |
| 11/1999 - 12/1999 | Department of Linguistics, Université de Toulouse II |
Workshop Organization
| 11/2022 | Workshop Flexible and Multiple Plural Marking in Language Contact and Creolization: Social and Situational Correlates at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. In collaboration with Tonjes Veenstra, Nico Lehmann, Elisabeth Verhoeven, Miriam Meyerhoff, and Manfred Krifka |
| 05/2019 | Workshop, panel discussion and concert Silence and Ellipsis in Linguistic, Philosophy and Music, University Teheran (in collaboration with Sven Bernecker) |
| 04/2019 | Kick-off of the Sociolinguistic Cocktail Lecture Series, University of Cologne (speaker: Heike Wiese, in collaboration with Isabelle Buchstaller) |
| 02/2019 | Multiculturalism and Multilingualism in a Megacity, Workshop (Philipp Angermeyer, Naomi Nagy, Michael Newman, James Stanford, Arthur Spears, Isaac Bleamn) and public panel discussion Empowering Mother Languages - Sustaining Diversity (Rosemary Feal, Ben Kallos, Lisa Coleman), DWIH New York (in collaboration with Gregory Guy) |
| 03/2017 | Register in linguistic theory: Modeling functional variation, 39th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS), Saarland University |
| 10/2016 | Establishing cross-cultural sociolinguistics, University of Victoria |
| 07/2016 | Sounds and Structure in Language and Music, University of Cologne |
| 06/2016 | Video in linguistic research and annotation, University of Cologne |
| 06/2015 | Toward cross-cultural sociolinguistics, University of Cologne |
| 03/2014 | Section Grammatical categories in macro- and microcomparative linguistics, 36th Annual Conference of the German Linguistic Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft), University of Marburg. (in collaboration with Martin Haspelmath and Andreas Dufter) |
| 07/2013 | Corpora and tools in Linguistics, University of Strasbourg (in collaboration with the University of Freiburg, Saarland University, and University of Nancy) |
| 11/2011 | System, Usage, and Society, University of Freiburg |
| 01/2003 | Diversity of Data and Perspectives in Universality and Variation, University of Tübingen |
Awards, Grants, Honors
| 2021 | DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) research and collaboration grant for the project Multilingualism in Iran: a sociolinguistic approach to grammar in Higher Education Dialogue with the Islamic World |
| 2020 - 2027 | CRC 1412 “Register. Language-Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation”, Humboldt-University Berlin, PI in subproject Disentangling cross-linguistic and language-specific aspects of register variation (in collaboration with Elisabeth Verhoeven, Humboldt-University Berlin) |
| 2020 - 2021 | DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), “EduVenTure”, PI in subproject Multilingualism in the Old and the New World (in collaboration with Gregory Guy, NYU) in International Virtual Academic Collaboration |
| 03/2019 - 10/2019 | Cologne Summer Schools: Promotion of CSS „Language, Diversity and Minorities“, University of Cologne (in collaboration with Katajun Amirpur) |
| 2017 - 2020 | CRC 1252 "Prominence in Language", Principal investigator in three subprojects: (i) C01 Prominence and information structure, (ii) Information structure project (in collaboration with N. Himmelmann & C. Rietz) Data, design and sustainability (iii) Public relations project (in collaboration with K. v. Heusinger) Making prominence prominent |
| 06/2016 - 08/2016 | Grant of the Thyssen Foundation in order to support the conference "Sounds and Structure in Language and Music" |
| 09/2013 - 01/2017 | Grant of the German Research Foundation DFG in order to fund the project „The Relation between Grammar and Usage: Null Subjects and Subject Position in Spanish and Persian“. |
| 07/2011 | Grant of the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft in Freiburg for transcribing and annotating Persian speech recordings of the database sgs |
| 01/2011 | Grant of the Freiburg School of Advanced Studies in order to organize the international workshop System, Usage, and Society |
| 09/2010 | Travel Grant of the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft in Freiburg for participating at the conference New Ways of Analyzing Variation in San Antonio, US |
| 09/2009 | Travel Grant of the Stiftungen und Körperschaftsvermögen of the University of Hamburg for participating at the conference New Ways of Analyzing Variation in Ottawa, CA |
| 11/2004 - 07/2007 | Emmy-Noether Research Grant (+ Rückkehrstipendium), German Research Foundation DFG |
| 11/2003 - 07/2004 | Grant of the interdisciplinary art, science & business program of the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (Germany) |
| 04/2002 - 09/2002 | Visiting scholar at the linguistic research group GGT of the UAB University of Barcelona (Spain), funded by the European inter-regional institution Four motors for Europe |
| 10/1995 - 09/1998 | Scholarship of the Dr. Jost-Henkel-Stiftung, Düsseldorf (Germany) |
| 10/1995 - 06/1996 | Grant of the Franco-German Youth Office, Berlin / Paris, for a research internship at the University of Toulouse 2, France |
Supervising Activities and Member of Dissertation Committees
(Univ. of Hamburg, Univ. of Freiburg, Univ. of Strasbourg, Humboldt University Berlin, Univ. Luxembourg)
| 2023 | Eric Engel (PhD). Introducing and tracking discourse entities in French: Aspects of accessibility and “topicality”. |
| 2021 | Alessia Cassarà (PhD). Subject focus in French and Spanish. |
| 2021 | Simone Mortini (PhD). Emergent multilingual children’s agency within translanguaging practices with peers and practitioners in formal and non-formal early childhood education settings in Luxembourg. |
| 2021 | Lena Pfannholzer (B.A.). Das Subjekt in Kopulasätzen: Eine Studie zum Spanischen. |
| 2020 | Georg Theiss (M.A.). Aussprachevarianten der französischen Existentialkonstruktion il y a. |
| 2018 | Camilla Hemmer (M.A.). Spanish in New York: an agent-based simulation. |
| 2017 | Chiara Gianollo (Habilitation). Indefinites between Latin and Romance. |
| 2016 | Frank Seifart (Habilitation). Grammatik im noisy channel: Bora Trommelkommunikation. |
| 2016 | Timo Roettger (PhD). Tonal Placement in Tashlhiyt Berber exhibits probabilistic variability. |
| 2015 | Eric Engel (M.A.). Prepositional null objects in spontanous spoken French: a corpus study on syntactic, semantic and pragmatic licensing factors. |
| 2014 | Sarah Manz (M.A.). Towards a focus annotation in a corpus of spontaneous speech. |
| 2015 | F. Modarresi (Habilitation). Bare nouns in Persian: Interpretation, Grammar and Prosody. |
| 2013 | Konrad Schaller (B.A.). Quo vadis créole martiniquais? An analysis of a French-based Creole in Martinique. |
| 2013 | Eric Engel (B.A.). Syntactic integration and the interpretation of concessives. |
| 2013 | Antonia Hausen (B.A.). Sociolinguistic variation in French at the level of suprasegmental phonology. |
| 2012 | Julia Henkel (B.A.). Semantics of topicality and theticity. |
| 2012 | Lena Hübner (B.A.). Comparing Language Contact Situations: French/English in Quebec and Spanish/Catalan in Catalonia. |
| 2012 | Daniel Hornuß (Staatsexamen & Magister). Theticity in French. |
| 2012 | Antje Galitschke (B.A.). Verb semantics, definiteness, and specificity: a corpus study. |
| 2012 | Martin Hilpert (Habilitation). Rocket surgery: On the use and comprehension of mixed metaphors. |
| 2012 | Assif Am-David (PhD). The Distribution of Definiteness Markers Across Languages: A Semantic Study. |
| 2010 | Gorden Maschwitz (Staatsexamen). Spanish subject pronouns and the fine structure of topics. |
| 2010 | Atena Sazegar (B.Sc. psychology). Cognitive representation of null subject pronouns and the theory of information structure. |
| 2009 | Christine Thamm (Staatsexamen). The interaction between syntax, pragmatics, and intonation in French polar questions. |
| 2009/2010 | Jana Freundt (B.A.). Focus in French cleft constructions: An analysis in terms of evolutionary game theory. |
| 2009 | Claudia Langwald (Baccalaureat). Verbal person and number inflection and null subjects in Spanish. |
| 2009 | Barbara Sastre (PhD). A sociolinguistic study on the attitude towards the language of German immigrants in Mallorca. |
Public relations work in the field of linguistics
(Overview)
| TV | WDR (Hier und heute, daheim+unterwegs, Lokalzeit) |
| Radio | SWR2, WDR3, Domradio, WDR2, WDR aktuell, Deutschlandradio, Deutschlandfunk, Hitradio, Kölncampus |
| News papers & journals | Süddeutsche Zeitung, BR24, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Deutsche Welle, Meeting Point Cologne, Deutsche Universitätszeitung, Dailyscience, Kölner Universitätsmagazin, Kölner Stadtanzeiger |
| Social media | Youtube and Twitter channel of the University of Cologne |
Languages
| German, Persian | mother tongues |
| French, English, Spanish, Italian, Catalan | more or less fluent |
| Portuguese, Modern Greek, Norwegian (Bokmål) | basic knowledge |