Birgit Hellwig

Birgit Hellwig is a Lichtenberg Professor (W2) for Language Documentation and Psycholinguistics at the University of Cologne (Germany) since 2014. She has held senior research positions at La Trobe University (2010-2014), junior professorships at the University of Erfurt (2008-2010), and postdoctoral fellowships at institutions including La Trobe University, University of London, and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

• Lichtenberg Professor (2014-present)
• Senior Research Fellow (2010-2014)
• Junior Professor (2008-2010)

Her research focuses on language documentation, typology, and anthropological linguistics, with fieldwork on African and Papuan languages. She has produced extensive digital corpora for understudied languages like Qaqet, Zaghawa, Tabaq, and Goemai.

Major grants include the Volkswagen Foundation's Lichtenberg Program (2014-2022), DFG-funded research on split ergativity in Tima, and projects investigating three-participant event encoding across languages.

Scientific awards:

• Lichtenberg Professor (Volkswagen Foundation, 2014)
• Future Fellow (Australian Research Council, 2010)