Maria Polychronidou Maria investigates the role of cognitive decline and compensatory processing in elderly adults' idiom processing. Her PhD project is a collaboration between the University of Groningen and Ghent University, and is co-supervised by Dr. Simone Sprenger (University of Groningen) and Prof. Rob Hartsuiker (Ghent University, Belgium).
Özlem Yeter Özlem's research concerns children's development of lie detection and the cognitive foundations of this ability. Her interfaculty PhD project is a collaboration between the Faculty of Philosophy, the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen and is co-supervised by Prof. Barteld Kooi (Philosophy) and Prof. Rineke Verbrugge (Artificial Intelligence).
Matthias Reiner Matthias investigates the role of linguistic predictions and cognitive compensation in the interpretation of wh-questions. His Sandwich PhD project is a collaboration between the University of Groningen and the University of Oldenburg and is co-supervised by Prof. Esther Ruigendijk (University of Oldenburg, Germany).
Abby Toth Abby investigates children's discourse processing using experimental studies and computational simulations. Her project is carried out at the department of Artificial Intelligence of the University of Groningen under the primary supervision of Dr. Jacolien van Rij. The project is also supervised by Prof. Niels Taatgen (Artificial Intelligence).
Vera Hukker Vera's PhD project is on children's development of irony understanding and is co-supervised by Dr. Simone Sprenger.
Irene Mognon Irene's PhD project is on children's development of scalar implicatures. The project is co-supervised by Dr. Simone Sprenger and Dr. Sanne Kuijper (Orthopedagogy).
Sofia Bimpikou
PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2023): Inside characters' minds: The role of reports in narrative perspective taking.
Sofia was a PhD student in Dr. Emar Maier's NWO Vidi project "The language of fiction and imagination".
Dorothée Hoppe PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2022, cum laude): Linear order in language: An error-driven learning account.
Dorothée was co-supervised by Dr. Jacolien van Rij (Artificial Intelligence) and Dr. Michael Ramscar (University of Tübingen, Germany).
Leanne Nagels PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2021): From voice to speech: The perception of voice characteristics and speech in children with cochlear implants.
Leanne's PhD project on the influence of the perception of voice characteristics on speech perception and emotion recognition in children with a cochlear implant was co-supervised by Prof. Deniz Başkent (Audiology, UMCG).
Anna de Koster PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2021): Acting individually or together? An investigation of children's development of distributivity.
Supported by a grant from the NWO programme "PhDs in the Humanities", Anna investigated children's development of distributivity. She was co-supervised by Dr. Jennifer Spenader (Artificial Intelligence).
Amélie la Roi
PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2021, cum laude): Idioms in the aging brain.
Using ERPs and eyetracking, Amélie investigated how elderly adults process idioms. She was co-supervised by Dr. Simone Sprenger and her research was supported by a grant from the NWO programme "PhDs in the Humanities".
Jessica Overweg
PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2018): Taking an alternative perspective on language in autism.
Jessica investigated perspective taking in language in Dutch-speaking children with autism and was co-supervised by Dr. Catharina Hartman (Psychiatry, UMCG). Since 2017, Jessica works as a researcher at Agentschap Telecom.
Atty Schouwenaars PhD Thesis (University of Oldenburg, Germany, 2018): The processing of morphosyntactic cues: Studies on comprehension and production of wh-questions by German children with normal hearing and children with cochlear implants.
Atty was a PhD student at the University of Oldenburg, Germany, under the primary supervision of Prof. Esther Ruigendijk. Currently, she is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen.
Margreet Vogelzang PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2017): Reference and cognition: Experimental and computational cognitive modeling
studies on reference processing in Dutch and Italian.
After doing postdocs at the University of Oldenburg and Cambridge University, Margreet is now a lecturer in psychology at Newcastle University, UK.
Sanne Kuijper PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2016): Communication abilities of children with ASD and ADHD: Production, comprehension, and cognitive mechanisms.
Sanne was a PhD student in my NWO Vici project "Asymmetries in Grammar" and was co-supervised by Dr. Catharina Hartman (Psychiatry, UMCG). After her PhD, Sanne became a lecturer and researcher at the Department of Orthopedagogy of the University of Groningen.
Franziska Köder PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2016): Between direct and indirect speech: The acquisition of pronouns in reported speech. [Kennislink]
Franziska was a PhD student in the ERC project "BLENDS" of Dr. Emar Maier (Philosophy) and now works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo, Norway.
Noortje Venhuizen PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2015): Projection in discourse: A data-driven formal semantic analysis.
Noortje was a PhD student in the Groningen Meaning Bank project led by Prof. Johan Bos (Computational Linguistics) and currently is an assistant professor at Tilburg University.
Jacolien van Rij PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2012, cum laude): Pronoun processing: Computational, behavioral, and psychophysiological studies in children and adults. Jacolien's PhD project was associated with my NWO Vici project "Asymmetries in Grammar". After obtaining her PhD, she held a postdoctoral position in Prof. Harald Baayen's group at the University of Tübingen, Germany. In January 2016, she started her NWO Veni project at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Groningen. Since January 2018, she is a Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen.
Gisi Cannizzaro
PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2012): Early word order and animacy. [Kennislink]
Gisi was a PhD student in my NWO Vici project "Asymmetries in Grammar". She is a founder and managing director of the Heritage Language Education Network in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Gerlof Bouma PhD Thesis (University of Groningen, 2008, cum laude): Starting a sentence in Dutch: A corpus study of subject- and object-fronting. Gerlof was a PhD student in my NWO Cognition project "Conflicts in Interpretation". After obtaining his PhD, he held a postdoctoral position at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.