Zukunftskolleg Award for Irene Heim

Irene Heim is Professor of Linguistics and Head of the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. She is one of the most renowned scholars working on the semantics of natural languages. Starting with her dissertation, she has put forward a number of ideas that have been very influential in the field, and there is hardly a topic in semantics she has not worked on. Irene Heim’s contribution to the field of formal semantics and the syntax/semantics interface is, however, not restricted to her own research. She has also shown great commitment in teaching and educating students and junior scholars and has influenced and shaped upcoming and future generations of semanticists. She is the co-author with A. Kratzer of one of the most influential textbooks of formal semantics, and co-founder and co-editor (also with A. Kratzer) of the journal Natural Language Semantics.

Irene Heim will visit the University of Konstanz regularly in the years 2010 to 2012. During her research stays, she will collaborate with Doris Penka, who is a fellow of the Zukunftskolleg since 2008 and nominated Irene Heim for the Zukunftskolleg Award, and other members of the Department of Linguistics at the University of Konstanz. The Zukunftskolleg warmly welcomes Irene Heim as a new Senior Fellow.