Janet B. Pierrehumbert

Professor Janet B. Pierrehumbert is a leading academic in computational linguistics and natural language processing, holding the position of Professor of Language Modelling at the Oxford e-Research Centre, University of Oxford. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College and affiliated with the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics. Her work bridges interdisciplinary research in phonology, sociolinguistics, and computational models of language dynamics.

Education: PhD in Linguistics from MIT (1980), A.B. in Linguistics from Harvard University (1975).

Research Interests: Focuses on computational linguistics, dialect variation, language dynamics, and the societal impacts of NLP. Her group develops algorithms for analyzing social media discourse, forecasting trends, and modeling language evolution. Recent work includes studies on dialect fairness in LLMs and semantic shifts in political discourse.

Key Projects: EPSRC-funded research on online forum dynamics, the Wordovators project on lexical innovation, and collaborations with institutions like the Oxford Man Institute. Her work emphasizes robust NLP systems and theoretical linguistics.

Awards: ISCA Medal (2020), National Academy of Sciences membership (2019), Fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Cognitive Science Society.

Grants & Advising: Over £6M in research funding, including EPSRC and Templeton grants. Supervised over 30 PhD students and postdocs, many now leading academics and industry researchers in NLP and linguistics.

Labs/Teams: Leads the Pierrehumbert Language Modelling Group, collaborating with the Oxford e-Research Centre and international partners like Stanford and the University of Canterbury.