About
Susanne Schötz is an Associate Professor of Phonetics at Lund University's Centre for Languages and Literature and a Researcher at the Lund University Humanities Lab. She is also the project manager for Cat-human communication research and a member of the LU Profile Area: Natural and Artificial Cognition.
Her research focuses on phonetic variation in three main areas: dialectal variation in Swedish and other languages, paralinguistic variation related to age, emotion, attitude and health condition, and phonetic variation in human-animal communication, particularly cat-human communication. She has led several research projects including Melody in human–cat communication (Meowsic), Cat–Human Communication, and studies on Estonian Swedish and Swedish vowel articulation using articulography.
Dr. Schötz teaches courses at the speech and language pathology and audiology programs at Lund University. Her work with cats has gained significant attention, including winning the Ig Nobel Prize in Biology in 2021 for research on cat-human communication.
Her research output demonstrates strong trends in animal communication, particularly focusing on the acoustic properties of cat vocalizations and how humans perceive and interpret these sounds. She combines traditional phonetic analysis with innovative approaches to study cross-species communication, making significant contributions to both linguistics and animal behavior studies.
Scientific Awards:
- The Ig Nobel Prize in Biology (2021)
- Årets Mäster (Master of the Year) (2020)
- Vetenskapssocieteten Lunds universitet (2016)
- Vetenskapssocieteten i Lund: Stipendium för betydande insats inom humanistisk forskning (2007)
Dr. Schötz has supervised research projects and students in phonetics and human-animal communication. Her work has been supported by various research funds including MAW, SKK och Agrias forskningsfond, and the Pufendorf IAS. She is in charge of the articulographs in the Humanities Lab, which are essential for her research on speech production and articulation.
She is actively involved in the Lund University Humanities Lab, contributing to its mission of interdisciplinary research in the humanities through her expertise in phonetics and communication studies.
