Research

My main goal is to explore linguistic diversity, especially the variations of word meanings across languages. I integrate findings from linguistics and psychology in my research and adopt a computational approach. I received my doctorate with highest honors (summa cum laude) from Friedrich Schiller University Jena in March 2024 and I am working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. A major achievement of my academic career so far is the development of a cross-linguistic database, which contains rich information on word properties across 39 languages (https://norare.clld.org). In addition, I have investigated the relationship between word meanings in the semantic domain of the human body, exploring the intricate interplay between language, culture and cognition. The key results of these investigations are reported in a study on body-object colexifications published in Linguistic Typology and a study on body part vocabularies published in Scientific Reports.

My professional values follow three principles

• conducting culturally informed and theoretically motivated research that embraces diversity at all levels
• publishing open-access and increasing the accessibility of research to a broader audience
• building an ecosystem for interdisciplinary researchers and mentoring the next generation of cognitive scientists