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I am an Associate Professor of Linguistics with a specialization in Neurolinguistics, promoted by Stockholm University, and currently a Senior Investigator at the Multimodal Language Department (MLD), Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI). For a complete record of my education, academic positions and achievements please refer to my personal webpage.
My research focuses on prosody, an essential but often overlooked aspect of human communication. I study how features such as fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration shape meaning and communication across different linguistic levels, from phonology and morphology to semantics, syntax, and pragmatics. My work draws on behavioral experiments, psychometric approaches, electrophysiological techniques (EEG), and neuroimaging. I also investigate emotional prosody and prosodic patterns in clinical populations. Over the years, I have had the privilege of collaborating with experts across these areas. For a full overview of my work and collaborators, please see my projects and publications list.
My current work at the MLD focuses on visual prosody, an understudied counterpart to vocal prosody, and centers on two main projects:
Multimodal negation, examining how prosody and gesture shape neural processing of clausal negation
Multimodal information structure, exploring how gestures interact with prosodic cues in information packaging
I am also developing new research lines on emotional and pragmatic aspects of multimodal prosody, including their role in clinical populations. Additional interests include robotic applications, LLM integration, and long-term plans to develop both a neural network model of multimodal prosody and a knowledge database.
I lead the Prosody Cluster Group at the MPI, a forum for researchers investigating prosody across modalities, languages, and disciplines. The group, which includes nearly 70 members from institutions such as Radboud University (CLS), Donders Institute, Utrecht University, Leiden University, and several German research centers, aims to establish a shared foundation across research traditions, to identify and address central research challenges, and to explore strategies for advancing the field. The group focuses on two main topics:
Architecture of prosody, examining how prosodic cues interact structurally and operationally
Neurobiology of prosody, examining neural mechanisms and networks underlying prosody
Overall, my research on prosody across auditory and visual modalities aims to contribute to a broader understanding of human communication, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically. My efforts in this area have been recognized not only through research funding but also through invitations to collaborate on national and international projects (see here). My work has further been featured by media outlets and acknowledged by scientific societies, including the Bernadotte Award from the Swedish Academy and the Academic Leadership Award from the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World program.
I currently serve as an Associate Editor for Language, Cognition and Neuroscience and am interested in hearing ideas for special issues or target papers on prosody. I also supervise MA and PhD students and serve as a senior mentor for IMPRS. I am happy to discuss student projects at all levels, including opportunities for lab rotations and internships, as well as any matters related to students. Please feel free to get in touch.
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