The Langauge Sciences Institute aims to connect scholars, teachers, and researchers working in all areas of the language sciences, to create collaborations that produce and support innovative research. Members span fields, disciplines, faculties, and institutions. Projects funded by Language Sciences have explored promoting multilingual literacy for young Canadians through online storybooks, the effects of vibrating devices on speech intelligibility, how opera training may sculpt our brains, how language might affect patient well-being, and much more. The institute strives to communicate its members’ work to many audiences: researchers, students, institutions, communities, and the general public.
Campus
Vancouver
Affiliated UBC Faculty & Postdocs
| Name | Role | Research Interests |
|---|---|---|
| Abdul-Mageed, Muhammad | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Artificial intelligence (AI); Deep Learning; Natural Language Processing; Machine Learning; Computational Linguistics; Social Media Mining; Arabic |
| Babel, Molly | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Linguistics; Phonetics; Recognition of Speech; Perception and Representation; Acoustics; Dialects; acoustics of speech production; phonetic variation; speech perception; spoken word recognition |
| Ballarin, Roberta | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Philosophical logic, nature and sources of necessity |
| Baron, Andrew | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | cognitive development, infancy, childhood, adolescence, racism, race, stereotypes, cooperation, bias, innateness, science education, multiculturalism, gender, ethnicity, neuromarketing, attitudes, preferences, psychology |
| Bartha, Paul | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Philosophy of sciences and technologies; Environmental philosophy; philosophy of science; Philosophy of Probability; Confirmation; Decision Theory |
| Bedke, Matthew | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Philosophy; Philosophy, History and Comparative Studies; Foundations of Ethics; Social Organization and Political Systems; Ethics and Fundamental Issues of Law and Justice; epistemology; ethics; metaethics; philosophy of law; political philosophy |
| Birch, Susan | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Social perspective taking, social learning, social cognition, imitation, nonverbal behavior, confidence, communication, decision-making, impression formation, child development My primary area of expertise is the study of children and adults’ social perspective taking abilities (i.e., their abilities to reason about other peoples’ mental states–their intentions, knowledge, and beliefs) and how their abilities to take another person’s perspective impacts how they form impressions of others, learn from others, communicate with others, and informs a range of socials. Of particular interest is a) how children make inferences about what is credible information to learn (e.g., how they decide whether someone is a credible source of information based on how confident that person seems) and b) how a widespread bias in perspective taking referred to as ‘the curse of knowledge bias’ (a difficulty reasoning about a more naive perspective as the result of being biased by one’s current knowledge) can impair communication (both written and in person) and decision-making across a range of fields (politics, law, education, economics, medicine, etc.)., Development of language, learning, and social understanding in infants and children |
| Black, Alexis | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Cognitive sciences |
| Bouchard, Marie-Eve | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Humanities and the arts; Sociolinguistics; Linguistic Anthropology; ethnography; language ideologies; Language and identity; migration; Language variation and change; Language contact; Creole languages |
| Bouchard-Cote, Alexandre | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | machine/statistical learning; mathematical side of the subject as well as in applications in linguistics and biology |
| Bowers, Katherine | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Literature and literary studies; Arts, Literature and Subjectivity; Arts and Cultural Traditions; Arts and Technologies; Arts and Literary Policies; Dostoevsky; genre; gothic fiction; imagined geography; literary culture; narrative; Russian culture; Russian literature; the novel |
| Boyd, Lara | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Physical therapy; Rehabilitation medicine; Learning; Learning and Memory; Motor System; Motor learning; Neurophysiology; Physiology; Plasticity / Neuronal Regeneration; stroke |
| Carenini, Giuseppe | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Artificial intelligence, user modeling, decision theory, machine learning, social issues in computing, computational linguistics, information visualization |
| Casas Aguilar, Anna | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Contemporary literatures; Spanish Cultural Studies; Catalan Literature and Culture; Gender Studies; Masculinities; Feminisms; Self-writing; Hispanic Cinemas |
| Ciocca, Valter | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Auditory System; Perception and Representation; Recognition of Speech; Speech and Language Development Disorders; Auditory grouping of speech and non-speech sounds, also known as "auditory scene analysis"; perception and production of normal and disordered speech |
| Colozzo, Paola | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Developmental language disorders; language and cognition; discourse, assessment and intervention for children with diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds |
| Dancygier, Barbara | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Linguistics, grammar |
| Davis, Henry Thomas | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | First Nations languages |
| de Villiers, Jessica | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Linguistics |
| Dechaine, Rose-Marie | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Native American languages; Algonquian language family, Cree, Blackfoot, Ojibwe; French / English bilingualism policy; formal linguistics; generative grammar (Chomsky); West African languages (Niger-Congo, Yoruba, Igbo, Edo); Nigerian languages; literacy vs. oralcy; language planning re: French, Indigenous languages, Speech/gesture coordination, syntactic interface relations |
| Dollinger, Stefan | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | English language; Language Contact and Linguistic Changes; Linguistic Variation and Society; Lexicography and Dictionaries; Language Interactions; Language Rights and Policies; Bilingualism and Multilingualism |
| Early, Margaret | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Adolescent issues, English as a second Language, language education, literacy, teacher research |
| Enns, James | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Behavioural neuroscience of reward and motivation; attention; action kinematics; social perception; perceptual development |
| Fels, S Sidney | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Human computer interaction, human 3D biomechanical modeling, speech synthesis, medical applications of modeling, computer vision, interactive arts and music |
| Field, Thalia | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | stroke; Clinical trials; cerebral venous thrombosis; outcomes; cognition; Machine Learning |
| Frackman, Kyle | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Cinema studies; Media studies (except social media and digital media); Literature and literary studies; Cultural studies; queer studies; German studies; media studies; history of sexuality; sexuality; sexuality studies; East Germany; film; Gender Studies; history of science; literature; Media; Media Types (Radio, Television, Written Press, etc.); Scandinavia |
| Giaschi, Deborah | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Neurosciences, medical and physiological and health aspects; Neurosciences, biological and chemical aspects; amblyopia; reading; dyslexia; motion perception; binocular vision; visual development |
| Gick, Bryan | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | phonetics, speech science, speech motor control, speech perception, multimodal perception, tactile perception, ultrasound imaging of speech, sounds of the world’s languages, Physical mechanisms of speech production, speech research |
| Griffin, Michael | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Greek philosophy, Ancient philosophy, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, Neoplatonism, Ancient logic |
| Hall, Kathleen | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Linguistics; Phonology; Phonetics; Laboratory Phonology |
| Hall, David Geoffrey | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Lexical and conceptual development, semantic development, language acquisition |
| Hamlin, Kiley | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Psychology and cognitive sciences; Cognitive development; Moral Judgement and Duty or Obligation Morals; Infant / Child Development; Foundations of Religious, Mystical, Mythical and Moral Thoughts; Infant moral cognition; infant social cognition |
| Hansson, Gunnar | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Linguistic structures (including grammar, phonology, lexicon and semantics); Cognitive sciences; theoretical phonology; morphology-phonology interface; phonological typology; historical linguistics (language change); locality relations; Icelandic |
| Herdman, Anthony | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Auditory System; Visual System; Audiovisual, Visual, Audio and Written Communications; Electrophysiology; Language and Cognitive Processes; Neuroimaging Methods (EEG/MEG); Central auditory processing; Auditory and visual perecptions related to reading acquisition (1st and 2nd languages); Brain computer interface |
| Hermiston, Nancy Jane | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Performing arts, n.e.c.; Other medical sciences; opera, voice, theatre, interdisciplinary work with a diversity of fields and opera; Opera training and its effect on sculpting the brain - Wall Opera Project, Hermiston/L/Boyd/J Werker |
| Howe, Tami | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Acquired language disorders, aphasia |
| Hudson Kam, Carla | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Language development, second language acquisition, critical periods for learning, input and language learning, language learning and language change, Psychology, First and second language acquisition, gesture and language learning, language contact and language change |
| Huot, Suzanne | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Occupational therapy; Human geography; asylum seekers; bilingualism; community-engaged research; critical theory; francophone minority communities; francophones; french; Gender; immigration; intersectionality; Migration Studies; Migrations, Populations, Cultural Exchanges; occupational science; Qualitative research; refugees; social inclusion; social integration; Platform economy |
| Jenstad, Lorienne | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Other health sciences; hearing aids; Aging; audiology; hearing health; amplification |
| Kobor, Michael | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Biochemistry; Bioinformatics; Genetic medicine; Genomics; Chromatin Biology; Epigenetics; molecular biology; Social Epigenetics |
| Kubota, Ryuko | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Specialized studies in education; critical applied linguistics; culture and language; Language Rights and Policies; language education; language ideologies; multicultural education; race and language teaching |
| Li, Guofang | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | longitudinal studies of immigrant children |
| MacLean, Karon | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Computer and information sciences; Information Systems; design of user interfaces; haptic interfaces; human-computer interaction; human-robot interaction |
| Malakaj, Ervin | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Literature and literary studies; German studies; German Film Studies; German Media Studies; German Media History; Queer Theory and Queer Studies; Feminist and Queer Film Historiography; Critical Pedagogy |
| Marinova-Todd, Stefka | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | bilingualism, second language acquisition, language development, literacy, ESL children, children at risk of language difficulties, language disorders in bilingual children and adults, Second language acquisition; language development and language learning difficulties of bilingual children |
| Matthewson, Lisa | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Linguistics; Semantics; Austronesian languages; Cross-linguistic variation and universals; Salish languages; Semantic fieldwork; Tsimshianic languages |
| McGrenere, Joanna | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Computer and information sciences; computer science; computer supported cooperative work (CSCW); human-computer interaction; interactive technologies for older users and people with cognitive disorders; personalized user interfaces; universal usability |
| Mole, Christopher | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Philosophical issues that arise from the attempt to understand the mind scientifically, aesthetics of literature |
| Moore, Patrick | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Anthropological linguistics, languages of North America, sub-Arctic ethnography, ethno-history, gender, First Nations Languages, Literacy and Orality, Oral Traditions, Dene (Athbaskan Languages and Cultures), Codeswitching, Gender, Indigenous Activism, and the Anthropology of Media |
| Muehlmann, Shaylih | Faculty (G+PS eligible/member) | Environmental politics, linguistic anthropology, drug trafficking, indigeneity, water scarcity, the anthropology of the awkward, US-Mexico borderlands, Mexico |