Heike Behrens

Heike Behrens is a Full Professor of Cognitive Linguistics and Language Acquisition Research at the University of Basel, holding a joint appointment in both the Department of German Studies and Department of English within the Philosophical Faculty. She has maintained this position since 2005 and previously served as Full Professor for German Linguistics at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen from 2002-2005.

Her research spans multiple areas of linguistics including psycholinguistics, cognitive linguistics, language acquisition, and corpus linguistics, with specific focus on frequency effects in language, sensory semantics, and both German and English linguistics. Her scholarly approach integrates cognitive and acquisition perspectives across linguistic domains.

Professor Behrens has secured significant research funding including the Ladenburger Kolleg project (2014-2016) funded by the Daimler & Benz Foundation, and participated in the DFG-Graduiertenkolleg on frequency effects at Freiburg University (2009-2014) as co-applicant and co-speaker.

She has held substantial administrative roles including membership on the Schweizer Wissenschafts- und Innovationsrates (Swiss Science and Innovation Council) from 2009-2015, Executive Committee membership in the International Association for the Study of Child Language (2011-2015), and co-founding directorship of the Herrmann Paul School of Linguistics Basel Freiburg (2011-2013).

Her editorial contributions include serving as Editor of the Journal of Child Language (2011-2015), Associate Editor (2010) and Co-Editor (2011) of the same journal, and membership on the Board of Consulting Editors for Linguistics since 2003.