Our efforts have not gone unnoticed! A short documentary has been made about the MEDAL project by the Communications department at the University of Tartu.
It features interviews with some of the Steering Committee members (Virve Vihman (MEDAL’s brainmother), Dagmar Divjak, Petar Milin, Liina Lindström, Joshua Wilbur, and Caroline Rowland), project coordinators Justyna Mackiewicz and Izabela Jordanoska, and some early-career researchers who have been involved in MEDAL, Loïs Dona, Elisabeth Kaukonen, and Aet Kuusik. If you are thinking of setting up your own international collaborative project, and want to know the challenges and rewards that come with it, or if you simply already miss the MEDAL events and need to reminisce a bit, be sure to check out the video!
What’s next for MEDAL?
This documentary is of course a nice way for us to wrap things up and to properly say goodbye to you all. But the people behind MEDAL will always have something new in store!
The team included the Steering Committee:
Asli Özyürek, Professor at Radboud University and Director at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Multimodal Language Department.
Asli will continue expanding her department and research avenues using cutting-edge motion capture techniques, and continue advocating for the inclusion of sign languages and multimodality in linguistic research. She co-directs the Nijmegen Gesture Centre with Judith Holler.
Caroline Rowland, Professor at Radboud University and Director at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Language Development Department.
Caroline is focusing on her role as Managing Director of the MPI, and expanding the field of child language acquisition research using multimethod and cross-linguistic approaches, as well as advocating for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in science and beyond. In addition to MEDAL, Caroline was also involved in the MPI’s grassroots Talent+ program for international interns.
Dagmar Divjak, Professor of Cognitive Linguistics, University of Birmingham
Dagmar is professor, Editor-in-Chief of Cognitive Linguistics, and part of the interdisciplinary Out of Our Minds team. Her research on second language learning touches on both academic and societal issues. Dagmar is also involved in outreach events for secondary school students on the impact of language on society.
Hatice Zora, Associate Professor of Linguistics at Stockholm University, and researcher at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Hatice’s work on prosody and information structure spans the interface of phonology, pragmatics and psycholinguistics. She will continue dividing her time between Stockholm and Nijmegen, collaborating with MEDAL partners in Tartu, and she is currently working on how informational structure can be best annotated in corpora.
Joshua Wilbur, Lecturer in Digital Linguistics at University of Tartu
Joshua will continue with his influential work on Pite Saami. He is Chair of the Pite Saami Standardization Committee, and creates online resources for Pite Saami. In addition, he is the National Coordinator for CLARIN ERIC in Estonia. He is also part of the project team of the brand newCentre for Digital Scholarship (DigiTS) project at the University of Tartu. Follow DigiTS on Bluesky!
Judith Holler, Professor of Psycholinguistics at Radboud University
Judith was promoted to Professor of Psycholinguistics at Radboud University during the MEDAL period! She is the principle investigator of the Communication in Social Interaction (CoSI) project, investigating human vocal and visual communication in face-to-face settings and how dialogue participants can construct meaning collaboratively. She also co-directs the Nijmegen Gesture Centre with Asli Özyürek.
Liina Lindström, Professor of Modern Estonian at University of Tartu
Liina is the Head of the Institute for Estonian and General Linguistics at the University of Tartu. She is also part of the project team of the brand newCentre for Digital Scholarship (DigiTS) project at the University of Tartu together with Joshua Wilbur, and she contributes to several popular science outlets, such as Novaator.
Petar Milin, Professor of Psychology of Language and Language Learning at University of Birmingham
Together with his colleague Dagmar, Petar heads the interdisciplinary Out of Our Minds team. He investigates learning in human language, combining experimental methods with computational modelling with advanced statistical data analysis. Petar has been very active in sharing the knowledge about statistics and computational modelling through multiple-day masterclasses within the scope of MEDAL and beyond, for example at the University of York.
Virve-Anneli Vihman, Professor of Psycholinguistics at University of Tartu
Like Judith, Virve’s promotion to professorship came during the MEDAL years! She is also Deputy Head of Development at the Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics at the University of Tartu. Her research interests center around morphosyntactic variation, cross-linguistic acquisition, youth language and bilingualism. She is also involved in outreach programs, such as the Young Linguists Club and the Psycholinguistics Bootcamp.
…and the Project Managers:
Izabela Jordanoska, PhD in Linguistics from University of Vienna
Izabela’s research is on the pragmatics of information structure, attitude reports, and reference tracking in conversation and in narratives. She also has a passion for outreach and contributed materials for Dutch popular science festivals such as InScience and Kletskoppen, and helped create the secondary school outreach page for the MPI. In addition to MEDAL coordinator, she also coordinated the Talent+ program at the MPI.
Justyna Mackiewicz, PhD in Applied Linguistics from University of York
Justyna’s research is on international students’ language and literacy skills, and its relation to academic performance. She is interested in societal issues and interdisciplinary work using cutting-edge methods in eye-tracking and EEG.
Taavi Vanaveski, PhD in Neuroscience from University of Tartu
Taavi Vanaveski’s academic background is in neuroscience and biomedicine, but he also has a passion for technology and business, and integrating those with science.
Sevilay Şengül, MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience from Radboud University
Sevilay’s research is on the interaction of gesture and prosody. She has a broad training in cognitive neuroscience, sociology, and psychology, and she also has a passion for diversity and inclusion, and making impact with her research.
Where can I find the workshop/summer school/ masterclass materials?
In order to preserve the knowledge we have helped foster, we have created an Open Science Framework page with resources, which will always be available. The page is still being updated with new material!