Alexandra N. Lenz

Alexandra N. Lenz is a Professor of German Linguistics at the University of Vienna and a Full Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She serves as Director of the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (ACDH-CH) and Spokesperson for the Collaborative Research Center 'German in Austria: Variation – Contact – Perception' (FWF F060). Her work spans dialectology, variationist linguistics, syntax, sociolinguistics, and digital humanities.

• Ph.D. in German Linguistics (University of Marburg, 2002)
• DFG Fellowship (1998–2001)
• Rosalind Franklin Fellowships (2005–2009)

Her research focuses on Austrian German dialects, lexical variation, syntactic change, language contact, and the interplay between standard and non-standard varieties. She leads the LexAT21 project, analyzing 21st-century lexical variation in Austria, and explores diaglossic repertoires through corpus-based and experimental methods.

Recent publications examine lexical dynamics in Austrian media during the pandemic, relativizer variation in Austria, and the evolution of possessive constructions. She has organized major conferences like ICLaVE12 and 'AI meets Humanities & Social Sciences' in 2025.

• Full Member, Austrian Academy of Sciences (2019)
• Elected Corresponding Member, Austrian Academy of Sciences (2013)
• Vidi-Grant (NWO, 2009) [unaccepted]
• Hugo-Moser-Prize (2009)

Lenz mentors through networks like 'Sprachwissenschaftliche Dissertationsprojekte der Wiener Germanistik & Friends' and contributes to editorial boards of journals such as Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik. Her leadership roles include chairing the ÖAW Research Department 'Linguistics' and co-founding initiatives like the 'Bairisch Across Borders' network.

She directs labs and teams at ACDH-CH, focusing on digital humanities infrastructure and language variation corpora. Her work bridges traditional dialectology with computational methods, emphasizing Austria's unique linguistic landscape.