About
Mikael Roll is a Professor and Assistant Head of Department at Lund University's Centre for Languages and Literature, specializing in Phonetics. He serves as Manager of Research and Research Education for the Phonetics department and holds leadership roles including membership on the Board and Working Committee of the Centre for Languages and Literature.
His research focuses on neurolinguistics, specifically how the brain processes speech. Roll leads multiple funded projects including a consolidation grant from VR (Swedish Research Council) and grants from KAW (Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation) and MAW (Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation). His work uses high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the relationship between speech perception and general auditory processing.
- As a Wallenberg Academy Fellow, he has led research on how speech melody predicts and facilitates grammatical structure processing
- He has developed assistive tools for second language learners
- Prior research includes investigating short-term memory decay effects on sentence processing
- He has used Latent Semantic Analysis to study word abstractness in Broca's aphasia
His recent publications reveal trends in understanding predictive speech processing, mood modulations of word processing, and the neural correlates of tone accents across North Germanic languages. His work bridges cognitive neuroscience, linguistics, and language acquisition with a strong emphasis on experimental methodologies.
- Wallenberg Academy Fellow
- Swedish Academy award to postdoctoral researchers (2014)
- Einar Hansen's research award (2015)
- Research award from Inga and John Hain's foundation (2017)
Roll supervises doctoral students and participates in major collaborative projects including TEAM (Transdisciplinary Approaches to Learning, Acquisition, Multilingualism) funded by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. His research integrates methods from neuroscience, linguistics, and cognitive psychology to understand language processing in the brain. He is active in the LAMiNATE profile area and LU's Natural and Artificial Cognition initiative, contributing to Lund University's interdisciplinary research landscape.
