Bistra Andreeva

Bistra Andreeva is a full Professor of Phonetics and Phonology at Saarland University, Department of Language Science and Technology. She is also a principal investigator of the DFG-funded project “Judeo-Spanish in Bulgaria: a contact language between archaism and innovation” (2022-2025) and leads or co-leads several other externally funded projects on prosody, information structure, and language contact. She teaches and has taught at Saarland University, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, and other European universities.

Education & Academic Background

• Habilitation (kumulative Habilitationsschrift): “Contrastive Prosody: Bulgarian vs. German”, Saarland University, 2016.
• PhD (Dr. phil.): “Zur Phonetik und Phonologie der Intonation der Sofioter-Varietät des Bulgarischen”, Saarland University, 2007.

Research Interests

Andreeva’s research focuses on the phonetics and phonology of intonation and rhythm, cross-language and individual differences in the production and perception of syllabic prominence, the relation between intonation and information structure, minority languages (especially Judeo-Spanish in Bulgaria), and the interaction between information density and prosodic structure. Her methodological expertise includes experimental phonetics, corpus-based studies, and acoustic analysis.

Major Projects

• SFB 1102 C1: “Information Density and the Predictability of Phonetic Structure” (DFG, 2014-2026)
• JuSpa: “Judeo-Spanish in Bulgaria: a contact language between archaism and innovation” (DFG, 2022-2025)
• Prosodic aspects of Bulgarian compared to other languages with lexical stress (Bulgarian National Science Fund, 2019-2024)
• Prosodic manifestations of focus in French and English from a Bulgarian point of view (DAAD & Sofia University, 2021-2023)

Scientific Awards & Recognition

While no major named prizes are listed, Andreeva’s work has been continuously supported by competitive grants from the German Research Foundation (DFG), DAAD, and Bulgarian National Science Fund. Her publications appear in top-tier journals and conference proceedings (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Interspeech, Speech Prosody, International Congress of Phonetic Sciences).

Teaching & Supervision

She offers a broad spectrum of courses including Experimental Phonetics, Prosody, Phonetics & Phonology of Slavic Languages, Introduction to Instrumental Phonetics, and seminars on language contact. She has supervised numerous BA, MA, and PhD theses and regularly teaches at the PhD School of Sofia University.

Labs & Teams

She is affiliated with the Phonetics Laboratory at Saarland University and collaborates closely with the Institute for Bulgarian Language (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), working in interdisciplinary teams involving phoneticians, computational linguists, and field linguists.