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Humboldt Research Award for Marc Swerts

Published: 14th February 2019 Last updated: 30th April 2019

Prof. Marc Swerts from the Department of Communication and Cognition of the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD) has received a research award (Forschungspreis) from the German Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, for which he had been nominated by Prof. Dr. Bernd Möbius of Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. The prize is worth €60,000 and will be awarded during the 47th symposium of research award winners in March 2019 in Bamberg (Germany).

According to the Stiftung, Swerts became one of "the key figures in the creation of a new paradigm that has demonstrably changed the field of speech communication research. His contributions in this area have been extremely instrumental, and were necessary given a growing unease in this specific scientific community about the focus and methodology of existing studies."

Achievements

The award is granted in recognition of a researcher's entire achievements to date, to academics whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future. Award winners are invited to spend a period of up to one year collaborating on a long-term research project with specialist colleagues at a research institution in Germany. The Humboldt Foundation grants up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards annually.

Grants

Marc Swerts (1966) started his academic career at the Institute for Perception Research (IPO) in Eindhoven (The Netherlands), with a PhD project on prosodic analyses of discourse units, which he successfully defended in 1994. He has received several prestigious grants, including the VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO)  and a personal grant from the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research. He has been a Professor at the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences since 2006, and is currently also acting as the Vice-Dean for research in that same School.