New Research Grant: "CURLEW – a Census of Urban and Rural Language in England and Wales"
(Co-PIs: David Britain (Bern), Adrian Leemann (Bern), Paul Foulkes (York) and David Willis (Oxford)) (June 2026 - May 2030)
CURLEW will be the first large-scale, systematic survey of English dialects in England and Wales in more than 75 years. Using app-based, time-efficient methods, the project will document linguistic variation across urban and rural communities, generations, social classes, genders, and ethnic backgrounds. CURLEW will provide new insights into how decades of social and demographic change have shaped the English language – with outputs ranging from scholarly publications to an accessible dialect atlas. The project begins in mid-2026, with 2 postdocs, 5 PhDs as well as student and research assistants. It is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) as part of a co-investigator scheme with the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
New Research Grant: 'Becoming Axolotl: Empathy, Simulation, and Embodiment in Medieval Narratives'
(Co-PIs: Prof. Dr. Annette Kern-Stähler, Bern; Dr. Mirko Sardelić, Zagreb; Dr. Catalin Taranu, Bucharest; July 2025-July 2029)
Funded within MAPS (Multilateral Academic Projects) – a multilateral funding instrument with Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, implemented under the second Swiss Contribution, mandated by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
Situated at the intersection of cognitive literary studies, affect studies, sensory studies, new materialism, and narratology, this project explores the role of medieval narratives in the simulation of cognitive, emotional, and sensorial experiences of radical others, both human and more-than-human (animals, plants, objects, spirits, gods, monsters).
