Benjamin Spector

Benjamin Spector is a Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris and a Senior Researcher (Directeur de recherche) at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), both within the Department of Cognitive Studies. He has held these positions since 2015 and is based in France, contributing significantly to linguistic research and academic leadership.

His educational background includes a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Paris 7 (2006) under Alain Rouveret, a Master's equivalent in Philosophy from the University of Paris 1 (2000), and the competitive Agrégation de philosophie (1997, rank 9). He was a student at ENS from 1994-2000 (rank 6).

Spector's research spans Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Philosophy, with core expertise in Formal and Experimental Semantics and Pragmatics, Philosophy of Language, and Logic. He integrates theoretical frameworks with empirical methodologies to analyze meaning construction in natural language, bridging formal logic and psycholinguistic experimentation.

His major awards include the CNRS Bronze Medal (2010) and the Harvard Society of Fellows Junior Fellowship (2006), recognizing his exceptional scholarly contributions early in his career.

As Principal Investigator, Spector secured two ANR-funded projects: 'Probabilistic Semantics and Pragmatics' (2020-2024, €191,000) and 'Trivalent logics and natural language meanings' (2014-2018, €212,000). He serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Semantics and on editorial boards of Semantics and Pragmatics, Natural Language Semantics, and the Italian Journal of Linguistics, while reviewing for 20+ journals and major funding agencies including the NSF and British Academy.