Christine Paul

Christine Paul serves as a Scientific Associate in the Department of German Didactics within the Department of Education and Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin, specializing in linguistic and cultural education. Currently on leave while fulfilling duties at Technische Universität Dresden, her expertise spans multilingual pedagogy, German as a second language, and conversation analysis, with significant contributions to corpus linguistics through the Wendekorpus project documenting German reunification narratives.

Education:

• PhD in Linguistics (2016), Freie Universität Berlin
• First State Examination in German and Spanish (2006), Freie Universität Berlin
• Graduate Fellowship, Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst (2009-2013)
• Study Abroad, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru, Lima (2001-2002)

Research Focus: Dr. Paul investigates multilingual identity construction in educational settings, analyzing how students navigate spoken vs. academic language varieties through conversation analysis and cognitive linguistics frameworks. Her work bridges theoretical linguistics with classroom practice, particularly examining meaning negotiation in multilingual dialogues and historical language shifts in post-reunification Germany, often utilizing corpus-based methodologies to reveal subtle pragmatic patterns.

Publication Evolution: Early career works (2010-2015) established her expertise in temporal inference and retrospective utterances within conversation analysis. Recent publications (2019-2023) demonstrate strategic expansion into digital education spaces and multilingual identity, culminating in 2023's examination of linguistic diversity on school websites. Her research consistently centers on language as a tool for identity construction within institutional contexts, with growing emphasis on intersectional factors like gender and migration background.

Academic Engagement: As co-developer of the Wendekorpus audio archive and contributor to the Learning and Research Workshop for Literary Education, she actively shapes pedagogical resources. Her 2024 conference presentation on multilingual female students' self-identification continues her trajectory of connecting linguistic theory to real-world educational challenges through empirical discourse analysis.