معرفی
Beáta Megyesi is a Professor of Computational Linguistics at Uppsala University's Department of Linguistics and Philology, currently on leave from August 2023 to December 2025. She holds a PhD in Speech Communication from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and has been a prominent figure in computational linguistics research and education at Uppsala University since at least 2000.
Her academic background includes:
- PhD in Speech Communication, Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, KTH (2002)
- BA in Computational Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University (2000)
Megyesi's research focuses on the intersection of computational methods and humanities, particularly historical cryptology and digital philology. She develops innovative tools that enable humanists and social scientists to obtain quantitative analyses of historical texts, with special emphasis on automatically cracking historical ciphers. Her work bridges linguistic analysis, computer science, and historical research, creating methodologies for processing and analyzing encoded historical documents. She has pioneered approaches to automatic transcription, key structure extraction, and deciphering techniques for historical manuscripts, making significant contributions to both computational linguistics and historical research.
Analysis of her recent publications reveals a strong trend toward interdisciplinary research combining historical cryptology with advanced computational methods. Her work demonstrates increasing sophistication in handling historical ciphers through machine learning, image processing, and language modeling techniques. The research spans multiple languages and historical periods, with particular focus on early modern European diplomatic correspondence. Her publications show consistent contributions to both theoretical frameworks and practical tools for historical document analysis, with growing attention to privacy concerns in language learner data.
Megyesi has held significant leadership roles including:
- President of Northern European Association for Language Technology (NEALT, 2020-2021)
- Head of Department, Department of Linguistics and Philology (2009-2018)
- Director of English Park Campus, Uppsala University (2017-2018)
- Member of Swedish Research Council's preparatory group for Linguistics (2021-2023)
As an educator, Megyesi has supervised graduate students including Eva Pettersson and Mojgan Seraji, and has taught courses on language technology, digital philology, and computational linguistics at both undergraduate and graduate levels. She has received research funding from Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) for multiple projects including DECRYPT (2018-2024) and DECODE (2015-2017), demonstrating sustained research productivity and external recognition of her work's significance.
Megyesi leads the DECRYPT project focused on developing methods to automatically crack historical ciphers, working with interdisciplinary teams of linguists, computer scientists, and historians. Her research group has developed specialized tools for transcription of encrypted manuscripts and created important resources like the DECODE Database of Historical Ciphers and Keys. She is an active participant in the international historical cryptology community, frequently organizing and contributing to conferences in this specialized field.
