About me

About me

I'm a postdoctoral researcher in the Psycho- and Neurolinguistics group at Osnabrück University. My research focuses on the interplay of language and cognition using experimental and computational approaches.

Research profile

The question that fascinates me is: “How does language support higher-level cognition?”. The starting point of my research is that language is not only a tool for communication but also plays a crucial role in cognitive processes such as perception and categorization (e.g., Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) but also higher-level cognitive abilities like reasoning (e.g., when using inner speech or in social interaction).

My current research revolves around cognitive aspects of language use and language evolution (such as cognitive and communicative efficiency), the role of conceptual hierarchies in contrastive inferences, social factors and speaker goals in indirect language use, interactive language models and assessing LLM abilities.

My PhD was supervised by Nicole Gotzner (Psycho-/Neurolinguistics) and Elia Bruni (Computational Linguistics) in the scope of the Research Training Group Computational Cognition. I investigated the role of language and pragmatics in conceptual abstraction, i.e., traversing a conceptual hierarchy (such as animal, dog, dalmatian) and choosing the right word to communicate what a speaker intends to say. The project made use of interactive experiments of production and comprehension of subordinate, basic-level, and superordinate referring expressions in a concept-level reference game, where concepts instead of single target objects need to be communicated. The same setup was also used to model language evolution between artificial agents to answer principled questions about how conceptual hierarchies emerge in a language and what role pragmatic mechanisms play during both language evolution and language use. Based on four case studies, I argued that language reflects the structure of conceptual hierarchies due to their shared origin in interaction. I found evidence for a joint evolution of efficient language and category systems through communicative interaction between speakers and listeners.

Here’s a picture of my PhD defense with the wonderful SPA lab:


News

  • 10.08.26 - I’ve recently completed a postdoctoral research visit with the CRC on Linguistic creativity in communication at Bielefeld University, hosted by Sina Zarrieß and the Computational Linguistics group.
  • 04.08.2026 - My dissertation is published by Brill Deutschland GmbH. The expected publication date is 7th December 2026!