Ingrid Lossius Falkum

Ingrid Lossius Falkum is a Professor at the University of Oslo with a shared position between the Department of Philosophy (IFIKK) and the Department of Linguistics (ILN). She is affiliated with the Centre for Philosophy and the Sciences (CPS) and the Centre for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan (MultiLing). Her academic career spans multiple prestigious research grants and leadership roles in both Norwegian and European research initiatives.

Education:

• PhD in Linguistics (2011), University College London (supervisor: Robyn Carston)
• MA in Pragmatics (2005), University College London (supervisor: Deirdre Wilson)
• MA in French Linguistics (2004), University of Oslo

Research Interests: Professor Falkum's primary research focuses on semantics and pragmatics of verbal communication, with particular emphasis on how children acquire pragmatic abilities to express intentions and make inferences about others' intentions. Her work spans lexical semantics, contextual modulation of word meanings, and the challenges of modeling human communication in AI systems. She investigates non-literal language use including metaphor, metonymy, and irony across typical and atypical development (particularly autism spectrum disorders).

Research Trends: Her recent publications demonstrate a clear trajectory examining pragmatic development through experimental methodologies, with growing integration of AI communication challenges. Her work bridges theoretical linguistics, developmental psychology, and cognitive science, increasingly focusing on how humans interact with language models and the implications for understanding human communication.

Awards and Recognition:

• ERC Starting Grant (2020-2025) for DEVCOM project
• Research Council of Norway FINNUT project (2020-2024)
• HF Strategic Priority Grant (2024-2028)
• VELFERD Research Project (2025-2028)
• Young Research Talent Grant (2015-2019)

Mentoring and Grants: Professor Falkum serves as Principal Investigator on multiple major research projects, mentoring numerous PhD students, postdocs, and research assistants. She leads the DEVCOM project investigating children's pragmatic competence development and the Creativity and Convention project examining pragmatic development in typical and atypical populations. Her current team includes researchers working on metaphor comprehension, irony understanding, noun-noun compounds, and pragmatic aspects of language in autism.

Research Infrastructure: She oversees laboratory operations for the DEVCOM and Creativity and Convention projects, with Margareta Berg serving as Lab Manager. Her research groups include Communicative Processes (ComPros), Figurative Communication, Clinical Linguistics and Language Acquisition, and Pragmatics: Theory and Experiments.