Bienmüller, Annika — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Annika Bienmüller is a junior exchange student from the University of Würzburg. As a psychology major, she is especially interested in the way language and culture interact and inform one another. After finishing her degree, she wants to become a therapist. She is excited to gain a deeper understanding of the history of Texas Germans through her work at TGDP.
Blevins, Margo — Postdoctoral Researcher
Margo Blevins, the previous Graduate Research Assistant (i.e., Project Manager) for the Texas German Dialect Project, completed her PhD in August 2022. Her dissertation, titled The language-tagging & orthographic normalization of spoken mixed-language data, with a focus on Texas German, proposes ways to streamline the annotation of Texas German transcripts to make them more usable for researchers.
Margo was first introduced to the TGDP in 2012 when she took Hans Boas’ course on Texas German at UT Austin and went on a trip to Wall, Texas to conduct interviews. She has been working with the TGDP since 2016, either as the Project Manager, or as more general support. For the next year, she will continue working with the TGDP as a postdoc and she looks forward to making significant headway on several of TGDP projects.
Boas, Hans C. — Project Director
Hans is the Raymond Dickson, Alton C. Allen, and Dillon Anderson Centennial Professor for Germanic Linguistics at UT. His areas of interest include documentation and preservation of endangered languages and dialects, computational lexicography, syntax, lexical semantics, and contrastive linguistics. He became interested in Texas German after hearing it spoken for the first time on a trip through Fredericksburg. A native of Göttingen, Germany, Hans enjoys cooking, traveling, playing the piano, hiking, and country western dancing.
hcb@mail.utexas.edu
Cavar, Damir — External Research Associate
Damir is Associate Professor for Computational Linguistics at Indiana University. His areas of interest include speech and language technologies for documentation and preservation of low-resourced and endangered languages and dialects, deep natural language processing, computational semantics and pragmatics. His interest in Texas German grew over the years while traveling through Texas, visiting the colleagues at UT, and becoming intrigued by the project goals and activities in the TGDP. Damir grew up in Dortmund, Germany, and enjoys Texas BBQ, as well as traveling, meeting people, nature, and music.
de la Fuente, Anna — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Anna de la Fuente is a native Austinite who is deeply passionate about the intersection of language and culture. In 2023, she graduated with a major in Linguistics and a minor in German from McGill University in Montréal, Canada. During her time at McGill, she delved into the intricate world of linguistic analysis, where she conducted undergraduate research focusing on sociolinguistic factors influencing words with variable gender in the German language, and the complexities of verb suppletion within the Na-Dené language family. Anna’s journey with the German language began in 2014, and her affection for it has only grown stronger with time. Her commitment to linguistic research and her insatiable curiosity have taken her from the United States to Canada, Sweden, Germany, and France.
Gardner, Austin — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Austin is a Government & German major in the Liberal Arts Honors Program. Outside of TGDP, he is the Vice President of Texas Political Consulting—a student organization dedicated to supporting non-profits and campaigns. Austin is passionate about transportation policy and its intersection with urban planning.
Gilbert, Glenn — Advisor
Glenn Gilbert joined the TGDP in 2017 as an advisor to the project. He wrote a pioneering dissertation on Texas German, graduating from Harvard in 1963. He was at UT Austin as an assistant professor from 1963-1970, and then moved to Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where he worked until his retirement in 2005. Glenn laid the foundation for the study of Texas German, most notably with his well-known Linguistic Atlas of Texas German (UT Press, 1972), as well as numerous other books and papers. After he retired, he moved to Florida. We are incredibly lucky to have Glenn as an advisor to the TGDP.
glenngilbert1869@gmail.com
Hansel, Heidi — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Heidi is a senior who is originally from Colorado, but has lived in Texas and Belgium as well. She is majoring in Linguistics and getting a certificate in German as well. Heidi grew up in German and Flemish household due to her dad and his side of the family originally being from Germany. Because of that, Heidi has always had an interest in the Germanic languages, and languages in general. This interest was the deciding factor for Heidi to join the TGDP, because the Texas German dialect is such an interesting piece of Texas and German history for her and she wanted to learn more about it. She plans to participate in the Würzburg Summer Program to get a better grasp of the German language and culture, as well as to make sure she is on a better path to go into the field of translation once she completes her degree through UT.
Herbert, Simon — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Simon is an exchange student from Würzburg, Germany. He is studying to become a teacher for English and Geography at the University of Würzburg. At UT Austin, he is taking courses in Linguistics, American Studies, and English. Simon is interested in Texas-German language and culture and hopes to learn more about it by working for the TGDP.
Hinrichs, Lars — Research Associate
Lars Hinrichs is an Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics at UT Austin. His research focuses on issues of language diversity and migration, especially where different varieties of English are involved. Having become interested in speakers of Texas German on a field trip to Doss in 2006, he is now researching the substrate influences on the English of Texas Germans.
Jones, Ellen — Graduate Student
Ellen Jones is a graduate student in the Department of Germanic Studies at UT Austin. She joined the project in January 2020 as an additional Graduate Research Assistant. Coming to Austin from Vermont, she completed her undergraduate studies in Linguistics and German at the University of Vermont, and was the Outstanding German Senior in 2019. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, dialectology, language teaching pedagogy, and language use in media. She spent a gap year living in Rhauderfehn, Germany through the American Field Service exchange program. While unfamiliar with Texas German, Ellen’s interest in dialects stems from her time in Rhauderfehn living with a family who partially speaks Low German at home. Ellen is looking forward to learning more about the TGDP.
ejones7463@utexas.edu
Kearney, James — Research Associate
James Kearney holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Germanic Studies at UT Austin, is a Assistant Professor of Instruction at UT Austin, taught German for many years at Katy High School, and has been a longtime student of the history of the German settlements in Texas.
Dr. Kearney has written several award-winning books and articles about Texas German history and European immigration to Texas in the 19th century. He has also taught several classes at UT Austin, including a class on European immigration (Fall 2013) and the UGS 303 Signature Class “The Texas German Experience” (Fall 2022).
https://jamesckearney.com
james.kearney@austin.utexas.edu
King, Sonora — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Sonora is from Austin, Texas. She is a senior Linguistics major who is also pursuing a German certificate. She is interested in sociolinguistics and phonetics, along with Germanic languages. Additionally, she completed a summer semester abroad in Würzburg Germany. Sonora looking forward to deepening her knowledge of Texas German and seeing how it differs from standard German by working for TGDP
Levina, Ekaterina — Graduate Research Assistant
Ekaterina is a sixth year PhD candidate in the department of Linguistics at the UT Austin. Her primary research interests are semantics and its interface with pragmatics and syntax. Her doctoral research concerns external possessives in German. Specifically, Katja is puzzled with the composition of their meaning, the meaning of their parts, and the encoding of possessive relationships.
Katja received her B.A. in German Linguistics and Spanish in 2011 and her M.A. in Theoretical Linguistics in 2014 from the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2006, she graduated in German as a Foreign Language (comparable to B.A.) from the University of Leipzig. She also holds a degree in Law (comparable to J.D.) from Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University (2004).
Mathis, Elisabeth — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Elisabeth Mathis is currently a freshman at UT in Plan II and studying International Relations and Global Studies. She is originally from Austria and acquired German there, but has lived in Norway and the US for the majority of her life. After starting at UT, Elisabeth was intrigued by German culture and literature, and is currently pursuing a certificate in German. Elisabeth is excited about learning more about Texas German and how it compares to the German she had grown up with.
Morrow, Emma — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Emma Morrow was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and has lived all over the United States. She has been living in New Braunfels, Texas for the past 8 years up until moving to Austin to attend UT. Emma is currently a sophomore studying Linguistics and pursuing a double major in German. She started learning German when she was a freshman in high school and she’s been steadily learning it ever since. She hopes to study abroad one day to improve her German through one of UT’s study abroad programs. Her primary interests include languages and how they affect people and culture, anthropology, environmental science, and literature. After graduation, she hopes to attend grad school and continue to study language and culture in order to help others.
Pierce, Marc — Research Associate
Marc is an associate professor of Germanic linguistics at UT Austin. His research focuses on historical linguistics, phonology, and the history of linguistics. He first became interested in Texas German during a stint as a visiting assistant professor at UT in 2005-06, and is looking forward to investigating it more intensively. He plans to focus on the history and phonology of Texas German.
Roesch, Karen — External Research Associate
Karen Roesch is an Assistant Professor of German at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. She is also the Hoyt-Reichmann Scholar of German-American Studies and the Director of the Max Kade German-American Research and Resource Center. Karen received her Ph.D. in Germanic Linguistics at UT in 2009 with special areas of interest in Texas German, Low Alemannic, and foreign language pedagogy. Her dissertation on Texas Alsatian served as the basis for her 2012 book with John Benjamins (Language maintenance and language death: The decline of Texas Alsatian). She has a Masters in Curriculum and Teaching from Michigan State University and has taught German, French, English, and Japanese abroad in Australia, Germany, and Japan, as well as in New York and Texas. She is a native Texan and became interested in Texas German several years ago through her High School German teacher from the German community of Doss. In 2000, she moved to Doss and taught German in the Fredericksburg High and Middle Schools before returning to UT. Before starting her job at IUPUI, Karen taught as a lecturer at The University of Texas at Austin and Texas State University in San Marcos.
Seiler, Robert — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Robert is a sophomore from Austin, Texas. He is currently pursuing a B.S. in Economics as well as studying German. He has been learning German on-and-off since middle school, and has become more dedicated to learning the language since studying it in college. He is participating in the Würzburg Program in Summer 2023 in order to explore Europe, and gain control of the language.
Silvers, Sammy — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Sammy is a sophomore from Chicago, Illinois but has lived in Austin, Texas for 10 years. He is studying linguistics, with a particular emphasis on historical linguistics, comparative linguistics and philology. He hopes to devote his life to the documentation and revival of endangered languages. He is interested in the phonological and morphological changes undergone by Texas German dialects and hopes the learn more about them by working with the TGDP.
Steinhauer, Jan — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Jan is a transfer student at UT who studies electrical and computer
engineering. He is originally from Bavaria, Germany. In the university
of Würzburg he studies Human Computer Interaction. He speaks three
languages fluently (German, English and Spanish), as well as two
German dialects (Fränkisch and Bayrisch). Furthermore, he wants to
extend his dialect portfolio an add Texas German to it. Currently he
is working with the TGDP on building a large language model. After
graduation he hopes to continue working on large language models and
to be fluent in Texas German.
Tzanis, Zoe — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Zoe Tzanis is a UT junior from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania studying Government and Journalism and pursuing a certificate in German. Her primary interests include political philosophy, community-government relations, comparative politics, free speech, and global democracy. Zoe developed an early love for language learning from her Grandparents and extended family, from whom she learned Greek as a child. Zoe only began learning German in college but found the language learning experience to be equally, if not more rewarding as an adult. After spending the summer of 2022 at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg in Würzburg, Germany, Zoe returned to the States with the intention of finding outlets to further her German language skills in her community. Zoe is looking forward to her work with the TGDP and learning more about Texas German!
Vogeli, Caden — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Caden is a third-year psychology major pursuing a minor in history and a certificate in German. Born and raised in Frisco, he has lived in Texas his whole life and has no plans of leaving. It is because of his interest in German and history alongside his native Texan experience that the Texas German Dialect Program was a great fit.
Warmuth, Matthias, Ph.D. (2023) — External Research Associate
Matthias Warmuth is a PhD Candidate in Germanic Studies with an interest in linguistics, SLA, and L2 pedagogy. His dissertation focuses on how language death and language attrition, i.e., the process of forgetting a native or first language, affect the pronunciation of Texas German.
More specifically, his research addresses a variety of changes in the sound system, contrasting data collected by Glenn Gilbert in the 1960s with more recent data collected by the TGDP. His focus lies on developments that are most likely due to transfer from American English (AE), the dominant language for all current speakers of TxG. Matthias has been working with the TGDP since 2017.
matthiaswarmuth@utexas.edu
Weiss, Jana — Research Associate
Jana is a historian and DAAD Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. With a focus on U.S. and transatlantic history, her research interests include 19th and 20th century immigration, knowledge, and religious history as well as the history of racism. Currently, she is working on her second book titled “The Lager Beer Revolution in the United States: The History of Beer and German-Americans as a Reinvention of Ethnicity, Knowledge, and Consumption”. She analyses the technological and cultural transfer of the “German art of brewing” to the United States, covering the beginning of the 19th century, when German-style, bottom-fermented beers were first introduced until national prohibition in 1920.
Zimmermann, Emma — Undergraduate Research Assistant
Emma Zimmermann is from Bryan, Texas and is currently a sophomore at UT studying Political Communication and pursuing a certificate in German. She was introduced to the language as a child because of her father and grandparents that only speak German. She continued learning the language in high school, and hopes to study abroad through one of the UT programs. In an interest to connect German culture with her own experiences, Emma started researching Texas Germans and their influence in Texas for a thesis paper in high school. After completing this thesis, Emma found TGDP at UT and is looking forward to learning more about Texas German culture!