Thorsten Brato

Dr. Thorsten Brato is a Lecturer (Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben) in the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Languages, Literature, and Cultures at Universität Regensburg. He holds a PhD in English Linguistics from Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (2012) and a teaching degree from Universität Duisburg-Essen (2005). His academic appointments include positions at Universität Regensburg (current, part-time), Universität Bayreuth, and TU Chemnitz.

His research focuses on:

• Structural nativization in postcolonial Englishes (especially Ghanaian English)
• Sociophonetic variation in African and Scottish Englishes
• Diachronic corpus analysis of World Englishes
• Phonological acquisition in second-language contexts (Cameroon)
• Development of computational methods for phonetic analysis

Brato's publications demonstrate strong emphasis on acoustic phonetics, corpus linguistics, and diachronic change in African Englishes. His recent works explore vowel systems, speech rhythm, and lexical expansion using corpus-based and computational approaches. He maintains active contributions to research on Ghanaian and Cameroonian English.

He has taught extensively in linguistics, offering courses including:

• Acoustic Phonetics
• Corpus Linguistics
• World Englishes
• Sociolinguistics
• Phonemic Transcription

with teaching experience across multiple German universities.