معرفی
Prof. Ted Sanders is a Professor of Dutch Language Use and Discourse Studies at the Department of Languages, Literature and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University. Since June 2024, he serves as Vice Rector of Research, representing Utrecht University in international networks like LERU and Coimbra Group. His roles include overseeing young researchers' development, research quality assurance, and interdisciplinary initiatives such as the Medical Humanities MSc program. Previously, he held leadership positions including Vice Dean for Research and Impact (2022-2024), Dean of the Graduate School of Humanities (2016-2022), and Head of his department (2012-2016).
His research focuses on discourse coherence, cognitive linguistics, and text readability. Key projects include the NWO-VICI grant (2005-2011) on causality and subjectivity in discourse, and the EU Marie Curie IRSES grant (2012-2015) examining bilingualism and language impairment. He co-led the national 'Comprehensible Language and Effective Communication' initiative (2011-2016) and developed the LIN readability tool. His work integrates corpus analysis, experimental methods (e.g., eye-tracking), and computational models to study how language structures affect comprehension and communication.
- Research areas include cognitive processing of connectives, bilingual language acquisition, and optimizing educational and governmental texts for readability.
- He edited special issues in journals like Cognitive Linguistics and Journal of Pragmatics, and co-authored books such as Text Representation and Causal Categories in Discourse and Cognition.
Major awards include the NWO-VICI grant and the Marie Curie IRSES grant. His grants and leadership roles reflect a commitment to advancing research strategy, open science, and interdisciplinary collaboration. He advises on doctoral programs and has supervised projects on VMBO students' reading comprehension and discourse coherence in multilingual education. His work impacts language policy, translation technology, and educational practices in the Netherlands and beyond.
He is affiliated with the Institute for Language Sciences (ILS), and collaborates internationally with institutions like Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (Berlin) and Radboud University Nijmegen. His research bridges theoretical linguistics with practical applications in education, healthcare communication, and digital literacy, aiming to improve text accessibility and reduce misdiagnosis in bilingual children's language development.
