We are pleased to announce that recent PhD graduate, Dr. Aylin Coşkun Kunduz has been awarded the Humboldt Research Fellowship. This is an exciting next step in Aylin's accomplished academic career. During her time at UIUC, Aylin published work in Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, Language Acquisition, The Journal of Linguistics, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, among others. She was also awarded a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant and Graduate College Dissertation Completion Fellowship and she was awarded the D.A. Kibbee Prize for 'Most Outstanding' SLCL Dissertation Completion Fellowship in 2023. Please read the interview below to learn more about this exciting opportunity:
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Where will you be working this fall? Tell us a bit more about this position? I am excited to have been awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship, which is highly competitive, with a success rate of around 20–25%. As part of this fellowship, I will first move to Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany in December 2024 to receive 4 months of intensive German courses at the Goethe Institute. I will then move to Konstanz to work with Dr. Tanja Kupisch on my proposed project for a duration of 15 months (until June 30, 2026).
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What research are you looking forward to conducting? In Germany, I will be working with Turkish heritage speakers as compared to Turkish-German returnees in Turkey. This project is an extension of my dissertation project where I worked with Turkish heritage speakers in the US and Turkish-American returnees in Turkey. Comparing returnees from the US and Germany will allow me to examine how situational factors such as the size, vitality, educational and socio-economic status of Turkish heritage language communities in these contexts contribute to the maintenance and further development of Turkish. Additionally, in collaboration with Drs. Maki Kubota, Cristina Flores and Holger Hopp, I will be investigating gender processing in German in Turkish-German returnees.
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How has your time at UIUC prepared you for this position? At UIUC, I took courses from the leading figures in the field and had various opportunities to do independent research. My supervisor, Silvina Montrul, was very helpful in guiding me through my first journal publication process. I also had the pleasure of collaborating with the peers and faculty in the department. Having co-chaired ILLS-15, the annual student-run linguistics conference at UIUC, I have also gained skills in leadership, communication and academic event organization. All of these experiences have prepared me to be a competent independent researcher and prospective faculty member
Congratulations Aylin -We'll be cheering you on for this exciting next step!
