Oliver Ehmer

Prof. Oliver Ehmer is a Full Professor of Romance Linguistics at the University of Osnabrück (since April 2022), supported by the DFG Heisenberg Professorship. He previously held interim professorships at the Universities of Regensburg (Winter 2021/22) and Freiburg (multiple terms since 2018). His academic journey includes a Ph.D. (2010, 'summa cum laude') and Habilitation (2018) from the University of Freiburg, focusing on interactional linguistics and spoken language structures.

Ehmer's research interests span linguistic structure, social interaction, and cognition; language variation and change; digital humanities; corpus technology; and pragmatic particles. He has coordinated major DFG initiatives, such as the Research Training Group 'Frequency Effects in Language' (2009–2012) and the 'Hermann Paul School of Linguistics' (2008–2009). His work emphasizes multimodal analysis of spoken corpora and the development of corpus tools like the act package for R and the Transformer software.

• Key Awards:
  • Irmgard Ulderup Prize 2018 (Best Habilitation Thesis)
  • FRIAS Research Prize (2010)
  • Hans and Susanne Schneider Prize (2009)

Ehmer leads projects such as 'Requests for action in interaction and language change' (DFG Heisenberg) and collaborates on 'Body knowledge' (Baden-Württemberg grant) and 'Emergent Memory' (DFG/SNF). He has developed corpora like ICAS (instructional corporeal skills), cespla (River Plate Spanish), and tools for transcription and analysis.