Anna Graff

Dr. Anna Graff is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Distributional Linguistics Lab in the Department of Comparative Language Science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. With an interdisciplinary background spanning biological anthropology and linguistics, her research focuses on the relationship between structural linguistic diversity patterns and molecular genetic diversity distributions across global populations.

Dr. Graff completed her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Zurich (2020-2024), following specialized training in Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge (2019-2020) and undergraduate studies in Biology and General Linguistics at the University of Zurich (2016-2019). Her academic path includes research assistant positions at the University of Zurich's Paleontology Institute and Mathematics Institute, demonstrating her broad interdisciplinary foundation.

Her research interests prominently feature linguistic typology, evolutionary linguistics, and molecular anthropology, with specialized focus on linguistic diversity hotspots and their emergence through contact and isolation processes. Dr. Graff employs innovative methodological approaches that bridge linguistic analysis with population genetics, using genetic admixture as a proxy for historical population contact to study linguistic borrowing patterns globally.

Dr. Graff's publication record demonstrates significant contributions to interdisciplinary research, with recent publications in high-impact journals including Science Advances and Scientific Data. Her work spans linguistic database development (ATLAs database), methodological innovation (Densify R package), cultural evolution of musical instruments, and paleoparasitology, reflecting her commitment to cross-disciplinary scholarship.

Her scientific contributions include:

• Groundbreaking research on genetic-linguistic correlations in language contact scenarios
• Development of the Areal Typology of Languages of the Americas (ATLAs) database
• Creation of computational tools for linguistic data processing
• Studies on cultural evolution across diverse domains
• Innovative approaches to interdisciplinary data integration

As a postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Graff continues to advance interdisciplinary methodologies that connect linguistic patterns with genetic and anthropological data, contributing to our understanding of human cultural and biological evolution through innovative research approaches that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries.