Alexander-von-Humboldt-Professorship Awards 2025

Dear Language-on-the-Move Community,

It is with immense gratitude and excitement that I write this special news item about a recent career development: I’ve been awarded an Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship to head the Literacy in Diversity Settings (LiDS) Research Center at Hamburg University and build a new research specialization devoted to “Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation Across the Lifespan.”

Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorships are designed to bring international researchers to Germany to contribute strength to strategic areas such as multilingualism research in Hamburg.

The Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship “Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation Across the Lifespan” has five aims:

• Original research related to the lived experience of adult language learning, institutional responses to linguistic diversity, and the reduction of language barriers
• Qualitative multilingual data-sharing by building on the Life in a New Language project
• Internationalization of Education research by extending the Next Generation Literacies Network built on the strategic partnership between Fudan, Hamburg and Macquarie universities (btw, if you are wondering: I’ll continue to remain affiliated with Macquarie University, too ☺️)
• Stakeholders engagement to deliver impact and reduce language barriers
• Knowledge dissemination to contribute to the valorization of linguistic diversity

The award ceremony with its focus on academic freedom took place in Berlin this Monday evening. It was a great honor to be presented with the award by the Federal Minister of Education and Research, Cem Özdemir, and the President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Robert Schlögl, along with five other amazing scholars:

• Dana Branzei, Molecular Biology (Institute of Molecular Oncology in Milan, University of Duisburg-Essen)
• Daniel Kráľ, Mathematics/Computer Science (University of Brno, Leipzig University and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences)
• Ingrid Piller, Sociolinguistics/Education (Macquarie University in Sydney, University of Hamburg)
• Eva Pils, International Public Law (King’s College London, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg).
• Sandra Wachter, Law (University of Oxford, University of Potsdam/Hasso Plattner Institute)
• Andreas Winter, Quantum Communication (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, University of Cologne)

For the first time in the history of the award, there were more female than male recipients 💪

You can read as short report about the award ceremony here or watch the live stream here.

What’s next?

We are building a dream team of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers working on an interconnected set of sociolinguistic ethnographies to explore Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation Across the Lifespan. The job ads will come out very soon – watch this space!