Research

Current Research and Research Interests

I am a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer ("Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin"). In my doctoral dissertation titled "The Role of (Deliberate) Metaphor in Communicating Knowledge in Academic Discourse", I analyze 23 academic lectures from four different disciplines (biology, chemistry, philosophy, and psychology) that I videotaped at a US-American college. The qualitative analysis of the role of metaphor in knowledge communication in this relatively large corpus (for a manual metaphor analysis) focuses on the recent concept of deliberate metaphor (Steen 2008, 2010, 2015, 2017), but is still rooted in Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff & Johnson 1980). By combining cognitive and discourse aspects of metaphor in its actual use, my thesis contributes to both Cognitive Linguistics and Applied Linguistics.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory (combined with discourse analytical approaches to language use and cognition), applied to various discourse areas, constitutes one of my primary research interests. Before I began working on my PhD project, I investigated emotion metaphors in expert-lay-communication (link). Psychological and linguistic aspects of emotions are also among my general research interests.

Other Academic Activities

Oct 1-6, 2015	Visiting Researcher at the Metaphor Lab Amsterdam, Amsterdam, NL
July 14-17, 2015	Participation in the ESRC Summer School in Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences (CASS Summer School), Lancaster University in Lancaster, GB
Nov 28-19, 2014	Co-organizer of the Workshop for PhD students of English: Linguistics, Applied Linguistics & Literature
Oct 18-19, 2013	Co-organizer of the workshop Science and Metaphor at Flensburg University
Jan 21-25, 2013	Participation in and presentation at the VU Metaphor Lab Winter School 2013: The Next Level, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL
Sept 26-28, 2012	Visiting scholar at the Metaphor Lab, VU Amsterdam, NL
Since Sept 2012	Co-editor of the international journal metaphorik.de
June 4-7, 2012	Participation in the VU Metaphor Lab Summer School: Metaphor Identification and Analysis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, NL

Grants

Travel Grant to attend and present at the 2013 Metaphor Festival in Stockholm, Sweden, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), August 2013.

Travel Grant to attend and present at the Corpus Linguistics 2011 conference, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), July 2011.

University Stipend for Ph.D students, Flensburg University, 07/2010 - 04/2012.