The Team

Aris Xanthos is a senior lecturer in language and information science at the University of Lausanne, with a long-term interest in computational and quantitative linguistics. His current research interests mostly concern the computational analysis of digital-born linguistic and cultural artefacts. As a principal investigator in the Evolving language NCCR and as the main applicant of the Accomoji project, he is particularly involved in the study of the expression of emotion in computer-mediated communication. He is also the author of several open source scientific software tools, notably the Textable visual programming environment for text analysis.


Prakhar Gupta is a senior SNSF researcher in the Language and Information Sciences section. A computer scientist by training, he is interested in working at the junction of machine learning techniques (in particular natural language processing) and humanities and social sciences. 


Leyla Benkais is a student in Digital Humanities and a student-assistant in the Language and Information sciences department at the University of Lausanne. She obtained her BA in Media Engineering at the HEIG-VD, during which she studied one semester in Paris at the Pôle universitaire Léonard de Vinci in the digital communications and e-business department.


Former member

Andrea Grütter is a Teaching and Research Assistant in English Linguistics at the University of Zurich, where she is at the beginning of her PhD in Linguistics. She is currently a research assistant for NCCR Evolving Language and was a research assistant for the ACCOMOJI project and a student assistant for the SNSF project “The Language of the Labouring Poor in Late Modern England”. She completed her BA in English and German, and her MA in English at the University of Lausanne. Her interests and focuses are in online discourse, computer-mediated communication, corpus linguistics, sociolinguistics, Fanfiction and fan communities more generally, and World Englishes.