Our research team brings together expertise from communication science, social psychology, and linguistics.

Camiel Beukeboom

Camiel Beukeboom is associate professor at the Department of Communication Science of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

His research mainly focuses on the role of language in the communication and maintenance of stereotypes and prejudice. Using both experimental methods and (automated) content analysis he aims to reveal the various ways in which social-category stereotypes are (implicitly) expressed in the use of language. In addition, he studies social media use in interpersonal communication, and the ways in which companies can successfully act in social media.

Kim Beenen

Kim Beenen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Communication Science of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She studied Communication Science at the University of Twente (BSc) and the University of Amsterdam (MSc). Her PhD research mainly focuses on the role of natural language use in the development and maintenance of stereotypes.

Pia Sommerauer

Pia Sommerauer is an assistant professor in the Computational Linguistics and Text Mining Lab (CLTL) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She is interested in how computational models deal with implicit information in language.

Christian Burgers

Prof. dr. Christian Burgers is a Full Professor in Communication and Organisations in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) and a Full Professor by special appointment in Strategic Communication (Logeion Chair) at the same university. He is also Program Group leader of the Corporate Communication group. 

His research focuses on the role of language in strategic communication, with a particular focus on figurative language such as metaphor, hyperbole and irony. He studies the use and effects of metaphor, hyperbole and irony across domains of discourse (e.g., political communication, health communication, persuasive communication, interpersonal communication).

Antske Fokkens

Antske Fokkens holds a University Research Chair on Computational Linguistic Methods. She coordinates the Text Mining/Language and AI track of the linguistics masters and the Human Language Technology track of the Research Masters together with Hennie van der Vliet. She is Vice Dean of Research in the Faculty of Humanities.

Her main interest lies in methodological aspects of research in Computational Linguistics. She driven by the question of how computational models of language work: what patterns and systems are found in natural language? How can they be modeled computationally? Which computational methods are suitable for modeling or analyzing which phenomena.