Members
Monique Flecken — Federico Gobbo — Frank Goossens (research intern) — Barbora Kolcunová (research intern) — Michal Korenar — Viktorija Kostadinova — José Plug — Menno Reijven — Bertus van Rooy — Daphne in ‘t Veld (science communication) — Erik Vellinga (PhD student) — Jean Wagemans (coordinator) — Julia Wędrychowska (research intern) — Sylvan Whitmore (research intern)
Research Affiliates
Marco Benini — Kees van Berkel — Katarzyna Budzynska — Laura Castelli — Davide Ceolin — Annette Hautli-Janisz — Thierry Herman — Dean McHugh — Martin Hinton — Jos Hornikx — Colin Guthrie King — Barbara Konat — Marcin Koszowy — Elena Musi — Eugen Octav Popa — Rahmi Oruç — Federica Russo — Jacco Verburgt — Jacky Visser — Kasper Welbers
Valorisation Partners
Ruben Brave — Leon Laureij — Hannah Schindelwig — Ondrej Uzovic
Alumni
Emily Duckett (research intern 2022-2023) — Ermioni Seremeta (research intern 2022-2023) — Ella van Vloten (science communication 2021-2022)
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Marco Benini is an assistant professor in Mathematical Logic at the University of Insubria (Italy). After a doctorate in Computer Science at the University of Milano, he became an assistant professor in Computer Science at the University of Insubria and, then, he won a Marie Curie Fellowship in Mathematical Logic at the University of Leeds. His main research interests lie in constructive mathematics, specifically the structural proof theory of type theories and related systems. His interests in argumentation theory arise from the application of the structural constructive approach to linguistics, which has been successfully pursued in Constructive Adpositional Grammars (CxAdGrams) and is now extended to Adpositional Argumentation (AdArg).
Kees van Berkel is an assistant professor of AI ethics at the Institute of Logic and Computation, TU Wien. His core research interests are in logical and formal argumentative perspectives on normative reasoning. It includes the study of norm explanations in AI, the logical analysis of meta-ethical principles, proof theory for defeasible normative reasoning, and argumentative characterizations of nonmonotonic deontic logics. For more info, please visit his academic website.
Ruben Brave is a Dutch internet pioneer, board member of Internet Society Netherlands (ISOC), Open State Foundation, Dutch Review of Books, and the Dutch Startup Association (dSa), media professional, and technology and media telecommunications (TMT) entrepreneur. In 2004, Brave founded the academic business incubator Entelligence b.v. for pre-seed financing, (valorization) mentoring, and coaching at start-ups in the field of Online Media, ICT & Automation, and Health & Life-Long Learning. He is the initiator of Make Media Great Again (MMGA.io), a blockchain-based annotation platform (with hundreds of registrants) in which screened and trained expert and/or critical thinking readers can provide constructive feedback to high-impact news sites concerning the use of sources and other quality aspects of news articles to correct misinformation and combat disinformation with NU.nl and AD.nl, two of the ‘Big Four’ largest Dutch online news platforms, as a co-development partner. Brave has shared MMGA’s journey with the European Commission but also with many others, including platforms such as Spotify and Issuu, and at events such as the Post-Truth Conference on Malta, which included speakers from Google, Worldbank, Wikipedia, MIT, and The Economist. In 2020 MMGA was acquired by Internet Society.
Katarzyna Budzynska is an associate professor in the Faculty of Administration and Social Science at the Warsaw University of Technology (Poland). She is head of the Laboratory of The New Ethos. Budzynska studies argumentation and persuasion, linking philosophy, linguistics, and AI. She has published 2 books and over 90 peer-reviewed papers, including 23 papers in international journals such as Synthese, Argumentation, Discourse & Society, and Artificial Intelligence. Her projects have attracted over €1.4m in grant funding in Polish, Swiss, British, German, and European programs. In 2008, she co-founded, and in 2008-17 coordinated, the activities of the nationwide ArgDiaP organization that coordinates the activities of the argumentation research community in Poland. More information is available at https://newethos.org/budzynska/.
Laura M. Castelli is University Assistant Professor in Classics (Greek and Roman Philosophy) at the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. She received her PhD in Philosophy from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 2008. She worked at the Scuola Normale, the University of Oxford, and the Munich School of Ancient Philosophy at LMU Munich. Her main areas of research are ancient metaphysics and logic (broadly understood), especially with reference to Aristotle and the reception of Peripatetic philosophy in its interaction with the other major philosophical traditions in antiquity and late antiquity.
Emily Duckett is a research Master’s student in the Linguistics and Communication program at the University of Amsterdam and a research intern for the Annotating Argumentation in the Wild project. Her contribution focuses on developing guidelines and more efficient tools for annotating natural argumentative discourse. Her research interests include argument mining and other argumentation technology applications, the interface between linguistics and argumentation, and the application of computational linguistics to clinical psychology and psychiatry. For more info, please visit her page on LinkedIn.
Monique Flecken is an assistant professor in Neurolinguistics and Multilingualism at the University of Amsterdam. She holds a PhD in Linguistics (2010) from Heidelberg University (Germany) / Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands), after which she worked as a postdoc at the Donders Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour (Nijmegen) and as a senior investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Her main research interest is the interface between language and cognition: to what extent, and in which ways, do(es) the language(s) we speak influence the way we perceive the world? For more info, please visit her pages on Twitter | personal website | ACLC website.
Federico Gobbo is full professor in Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University of Amsterdam by special appointment. He got his PhD in Computer Science, defended in 2009 at the University of Insubria (Italy), with a dissertation on Constructive Adpositional Grammars (CxAdGrams). Gobbo participates in the European Network for Argumentation and Public PoLicY analysis (APPLY) and Language in the Human-Machine Era (LITHME). He has been a visiting professor at the University of Turin (Italy) and at Nanjing University (China). His main research interests are Language Policy and Planning, and Constructive Linguistics, in particular, Adpositional Argumentation (AdArg). For more info, please visit his pages on LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | personal website | UvA.
Frank Goossens is a second-year student in the research Master’s program of Logic at the University of Amsterdam and a research intern for the Philosophy of Argument project. Previously, he finished his bachelor of law at the University of Amsterdam. In the Master of Logic, Frank is a member of the Logic & Language track, focusing on legal argumentative discourse. His contribution towards the systematic aspect of the Philosophy of Argument project centers around the specific analysis of the use of interpretative arguments in the motivations of judges in terms of the Periodic Table of Arguments.
Annette Hautli-Janisz is Junior Professor of Computational Rhetoric and Natural Language Processing at the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Passau, Germany. She also heads the Steinbeis Transfer Center for Linguistic Data Analysis. Her group develops computational linguistic models of discourse, rhetorical strategies, and argumentation in naturally spoken language, with the ultimate goal of facilitating knowledge gains in theoretical and computational work on argumentation and communication. With the surge of Large Language Models in 2022 she got interested in testing their capabilities – the work on which has hit the headlines in major international and national newspapers.
Thierry Herman is a Senior Lecturer at the Universities of Lausanne and Neuchâtel (Switzerland). As a discourse analyst and a specialist in rhetoric and text linguistics, he has done extensive work on the link between argumentation, discursive moves, and rhetorical strategies. He is the co-editor of several volumes and the author of numerous papers, both in French and English, which explore the relationship between language structure and argumentative processes in news editorials, conspiracy theories, or populist political discourse. Herman is primarily interested in methodological tools to analyze rhetorical pathos, ethos, and logos in contemporary texts. He has also studied the rhetorical and cognitive effects of different language devices used in argument schemes, such as the argument from authority and the argumentum ad populum.
Martin Hinton is an assistant professor in the Department of English and General Linguistics at the University of Łódź (Poland). His research interests straddle linguistics and argumentation, and he is particularly focused on areas where the two overlap. Hinton has published several papers on argumentation schemes and fallacies, edited a number of journal special issues, and is an active organizer of events such as the PhilArg workshop series. In his recent monograph Evaluating the Language of Argument (2021) he examines the nature of the relationship between language and argument, and lays out the theoretical foundations for a system of argument evaluation – the Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation (CAPNA). Hinton has a strong interest in facilitating cooperation amongst the research community and is deputy chair of the Polish argumentation society ArgDiaP, and a member of the Centre for Applied Rhetoric at the University of Warsaw.
Jos Hornikx is full professor of International Business Communication at Radboud University Nijmegen. His work on argumentation is focused on the question of how people reason with everyday arguments. He has conducted empirical research on the issue of whether and when normatively strong arguments are more persuasive than normatively weak arguments. He has been a pioneering researcher on the role of culture in argument evaluation. Recently, he has started exploring how a Bayesian approach might improve our understanding of reasoning with arguments and how agent-based modeling may assist in unraveling the impact of argument quality in more complex, dynamic contexts.
Colin Guthrie King is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy of Providence College (US) and a visiting professor of Philosophy at the Universität Heidelberg (Germany). King studied philosophy, German, and astronomy at Colgate University, classics and philosophy in Freiburg, Bonn, Lille, and Berlin, and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His research is on ancient philosophy, in particular Aristotle, on the history and philosophy of logic and argumentation, and the history and philosophy of science.
Barbora Kolcunová is currently a third-year bachelor’s student, studying Linguistics, at the University of Amsterdam. Her primary interests lie in exploring the intricacies of neurolinguistics and further delving into the subject during her last year of her bachelor’s program and beyond.
Barbara Konat is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. To understand the relationship between emotion and argumentation, she draws on her experience from her postdoctoral stay at the Centre for Argument Technology, University of Dundee, as well as her previous role as PI in R&D at “Sentimenti.pl” — a startup focused on sentiment and emotion analysis. She currently leads the ComPathos project, aiming to develop a new computational model of pathos within the realm of rhetoric, supported by the Polish National Science Centre. Additionally, she contributes as a Co-Investigator to two international projects: “iTRUST” (countering social media polarisation) and “AMoRe” (a pragmatic and rhetorical model of rephrase), both hosted at Warsaw University of Technology. Her publications integrate cognitive science with computational linguistics to explore the emotional and dialogical dimensions of argumentation. More info at bkonat.home.amu.edu.pl.
Michal Korenar is an assistant professor at the Department of Dutch Studies at the University of Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Reading and worked as a Postdoctoral Fulbright Fellow at Pennsylvania State University, where he investigated how bilingualism influences the dynamics of brain networks associated with creativity. As a neuroscientist and linguist, he is captivated by the brain’s capacity to adapt when we acquire and use multiple languages and how this knowledge can be harnessed for the benefit of society. One of his recent pursuits with colleagues from Amsterdam UMC involves investigating whether bilingualism can rewire our brains to postpone the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
Viktorija Kostadinova obtained her PhD from Leiden University in 2018 with a dissertation on the link between language prescriptivism and language use in American English. She is currently a lecturer in English Sociolinguistics at the University of Amsterdam, where she has taught a range of BA and MA courses in linguistics and sociolinguistics since 2017. More recently, her research has focused on studying various aspects of language use in online communities, one of which is the annotation of argumentative moves in discussions on Reddit.
Marcin Koszowy is an associate professor in the Laboratory of The New Ethos at the Faculty of Administration and Social Science, Warsaw University of Technology, Poland. His work is situated in the areas of argumentation theory, logic, philosophy of language, pragmatics, and artificial intelligence. His recent research interests cover argumentative and dialogical appeals to authority and expert opinion, dialogical patterns of appealing to ethos, linguistic and cognitive aspects of rephrasing, and corpus analysis of argumentative texts for the purpose of developing rhetoric analytics. He serves as a committee member of the Steering Board of the European Conference of Argumentation (ECA), and the Steering Board of the ArgDiaP organisation that coordinates the activities of argumentation research community in Poland. More information is available at https://newethos.org/koszowy/.
Dean McHugh is a postdoctoral researcher in information quality and argument-checking at the University of Amsterdam. His research investigates how we give explanations. By combining insights from philosophy, linguistics, and logic, his research deals with what it means for a given explanation to hold. He completed a PhD at the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation at the University of Amsterdam on causal inference and the semantics of conditionals. Relatedly, he is interested in the imagination; for a common idea is that when we reason about causation, we imagine scenarios where the cause occurs, and scenarios where it does not, and compare what happens in each. His research investigates what principles underlie this imaginative faculty.
Elena Musi is a lecturer in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool (UK). Her expertise lies at the interface between Theoretical and Applied Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence. Before joining the University of Liverpool, Musi worked as the Language Engineer for Alexa in Italian in the Amazon Alexa Applied Modelling and Data Science team (Cambridge, MA). She arrived at Amazon Alexa after being a postdoctoral fellow at the Data Science Institute at Columbia University (US). Musi’s current research interweaves Artificial Intelligence and Communication Sciences with the broad aim of critically reflecting debates about new technologies and their global impact, focusing on (mis)information and human-computer interaction. She is currently PI on the UKRI ESRC project “Being Alone Together: Developing Fake News Immunity”.
Rahmi Oruç is a lecturer in the Comparative Literature department at Istanbul’s Ibn Haldun University. In 2022, he defended his PhD thesis, where he introduces Munāẓara – a seven centuries old dialogical argumentation theory and debate practice – as a contemporary argumentation theory that may complement and even serve as an alternative to existing theories. With a team of researchers, he has founded the ArguMunazara Research Center, and he is working on the ADAB project, which aims to develop, test, and apply an alternative competitive debating model drawing from the Munāẓara tradition. For more information, please see his profiles on Academia and ResearchGate.
José Plug is a senior researcher at the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric of the University of Amsterdam and program director of the MA Dutch Language and Culture. Her research is focused on legal argumentation and argumentation in legislative debates. Plug’s other research interests are political and visual argumentation and the theory of debate. She published on these topics in several books, academic volumes, and international (legal) journals. Plug was co-organizer of a series of national and international conferences on legal argumentation. Together with Eveline Feteris (UvA), Harm Kloosterhuis (EUR), and Carel Smith (LU) she published Argumentation and the Application of Legal Rules (2009) and Legal Argumentation and the Rule of Law (2016). Her other research collaborations include the NWO-funded research project Resistance to Metaphor.
Eugen Octav Popa is an argumentation scholar who works in STS (science and technology studies) and RRI (responsible research and innovation). He obtained his PhD in 2016 with a thesis on argumentative interactions in science and published papers on the reasonableness of argumentative interactions, discussion structures for reconstructing scientific debates, friction between stakeholders in innovation projects, and technological conflict. He has been a postdoctoral researcher in several Horizon 2020 such as RRI Tools, RiConfigure, and RRIstart. He has also worked with the Dutch Health Council in studying the interaction between scientists and policymakers in cases of public controversy. He currently works as a postdoctoral researcher on a project on responsible innovation paths for ultrathin nanomembranes within the Science, Technology, and Policy Studies (STEPS) at the University of Twente. His work has been published in Informal Logic, Science and Public Policy, Public Understanding of Science, Philosophy and Technology, Life Sciences Society and Policy, and Journal of Pragmatics. He is the winner of the 2016 J.A. Blair Prize for the study of argumentation and the 2020 prize for the Best Academic Paper at the ETHAC Conference of the European Triple Helix Association. For more info, see LinkedIn | ResearchGate.
Menno Reijven is an assistant professor in the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory, and Rhetoric at the University of Amsterdam and holds a PhD in Language and Social Interaction from the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (USA). His research is based on pragmatics and ethnomethodology, doing discourse analysis to uncover how commitments and cognitive states are interactionally negotiated, and listeners are persuaded. Currently, Reijven studies how politicians negotiate their identity in various forms of election discourses and how argumentation in political interactions is phrased to enhance its understandability.
Bertus van Rooy is professor of English Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. His main interest is in language variation, and the processes by which new variants in language arise and gain acceptance and conventionality in language use. His empirical focus is on World Englishes, the study of varieties of English across the world, especially those varieties that develop among non-native users of the language, alongside related forms of language in high-contact situations, such as second language learning and translation. He also investigates select aspects of political communication, including the use of metaphor to persuade audiences or hide from accountability, and the changes in language use in parliaments over time, focussing on expressions of modality.
Federica Russo is a philosopher of science and technology based at Utrecht University (Freudenthal Institute). Her research focuses on epistemological, methodological, and normative aspects as they arise in the biomedical and social sciences, and in highly technologized scientific contexts. Federica is editor-in-chief of the journal Digital Society and an External Faculty Member at the Institute for Advanced Study at the UvA. For more info, please visit her pages on Twitter | personal website.
Hannah Schindelwig works as a Linguistic Quality Manager in education technology. She holds a Research Master’s in Argumentation, Communication, and Rhetoric from the University of Amsterdam. In her professional life, she is especially interested in the intersection between Argumentation Theory and AI technology and how tools developed at this crossroad can help guide users toward better critical thinking skills. As a valorization partner, she focuses on creating collaboration opportunities between businesses in the education technology sector and researchers from the LANCAR group. To connect or to learn more, please visit her page on LinkedIn.
Ermioni Seremeta is a second-year student in the research Master’s program Linguistics and Communication at the University of Amsterdam and a research intern for the KRINO project. Her research focus lies on argumentative discourse from a cognitive perspective. During her Master’s studies, she specialized in argumentation theory, political argumentation, cognition and reasoning, and the philosophical foundations of computational semantics. She contributes to the KRINO project by formalizing the statement type annotation task in the Argument Type Identification Procedure (ATIP). She is also affiliated with the LANCAR group as a member of an ongoing research project investigating the effect of logic and pragmatics on conditional argument processing.
Ondrej Uzovic is a senior software engineer and technology enthusiast with 25+ years of experience. He has a strong background in developing medical software. As a Siemens software architect, he participated in developing particle therapy facilities in Heidelberg and Marburg, which specialize in treating cancers by precise beams of energetic protons and ions. As a senior software architect, he participated in developing hybrid nuclear medicine PET/CT and SPECT/CT scanners capable of producing three-dimensional images of functional processes in the human body. He co-founded the NG Aviation company, which developed a unique product for airports and aviation authorities, increasing the safety and effectiveness of air traffic by enabling users to work with digital data.
Daphne in ‘t Veld is studying Cognition, Language, and Communication at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, she has been the chair of SCIO Studievereniging. Currently, she is the secretary of the faculty association ALPHA. As the science communication officer of the LANCAR group, she is responsible for social media accounts and other science communication channels and activities. For more info, please visit her page on LinkedIn.
Erik Vellinga is a PhD candidate at the Amsterdam Centre for Language and Communication. After studying Philosophy and Dutch Language and Culture at the University of Groningen, he specialized in argumentation theory with his Master’s in Communication and Information Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Vellinga’s main research interests lie in the relationship between argumentation theory and other language domains, such as logic, fiction, and multimodal communication. Besides his work at the ACLC, Vellinga is a lecturer at the Centre for Languages and Academic Skills of the Technical University in Delft.
Jacco Verburgt is a research fellow at the Tilburg School of Theology, Tilburg University, as well as a senior lecturer at several institutes of higher education. He studied philosophy, theology, and religious studies in Amsterdam, Leuven, Rome, and Berlin.
Jacky Visser is a lecturer in Computing at the Centre for Argument Technology of the University of Dundee. His general areas of interest are argumentation and reasoning (both human and artificial), focusing on digital tools for critical literacy. This research draws on various methods from artificial intelligence, linguistics, logic, and philosophy, such as machine learning and corpus annotation. Visser has published over 30 papers and has taught at the Universities of Amsterdam and Dundee. In addition to reviewing for conferences such as ACL and AAAI and journals such as Logic & Computation, he serves on the editorial board of the journal Argumentation. Visser is leading part of ARG-tech’s Dstl-funded research projects in the Intelligence domain and was PI in the Horizon2020 project Council of Coaches.
Ella van Vloten is studying Cognition, Language, and Communication at the University of Amsterdam. She follows the Communication Science track and the minor in European Politics and Global Change. Previously, she has been the chair of SCIO Studievereniging. As the former science communication officer of the LANCAR group, she was responsible for social media accounts and other science communication channels and activities. For more info, please visit her page on LinkedIn.
Jean Wagemans is professor of Cognition, Communication, and Argumentation at the University of Amsterdam. Wagemans is the originator of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA), an innovative taxonomy of persuasive techniques with applications in argument-checking, formal linguistics, and explainable AI. Wagemans authored the chapter on The Philosophy of Argument (2022) in the Cambridge Handbook for the Philosophy of Language and co-authored the Handbook of Argumentation Theory (2014) and Argumentation and Debate (in Dutch, 2014). He publishes scientific articles, web content, and popularizing columns, and regularly appears in the media to talk about his research and to provide expert commentary on current affairs. For more information, please visit his pages on Academia | LinkedIn | ORCID | Twitter | UvA.
Julia Wędrychowska is a student in the Master’s program Language and Society at the University of Amsterdam. Her main research focus is sociolinguistics, with a special interest in topics related to political discourse analysis as well as language policy and planning. Research conducted during her internship was focused primarily on argumentation structure, aiming to define statement relations for future annotation purposes. Moreover, she contributed to the ongoing LANCAR projects, including Annotating Argumentation in the Wild, as well as collaborations with the Warsaw University of Technology and the University of Passau.
Kasper Welbers is an assistant professor at the Department of Communication Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research focuses primarily on how the gatekeeping process of news messages has changed due to the proliferation of new media technologies and how we can study this using computational methods. Towards this end, he is also an open-source developer for data collection and content analysis tools. Kasper is currently working on an NWO-VENI-funded project to develop a methodology for obtaining digital traces of news consumption behavior and studying media trust.
Sylvan Whitmore is a student in the research Masters of Linguistics and Communication programme at the University of Amsterdam and a research intern for the Neuroscience of Persuasion project. He is contributing to the project by adapting elements of argumentation and persuasion into experimental items. His main research interests lie in the practical application of argumentation theory.
LANCAR 