Skip to main content

Dr. Silva H. Ladewig

I am a linguist at the Georg-August University of Göttingen and a member of the Sign Lab Göttingen there.

Here, I research the embodiment and conventionalization of meaning in gestures, especially within my DFG project "Processes of Stabilization in Gestures," which is part of the priority program "Visual Communication. Theoretical, Empirical, and Applied Perspectives (ViCom)“. My project focuses on the analysis of recurrent gestures in German, their stabilization, and comparison with the signs of German Sign Language (DGS).

My research interest is the embodied nature of language and the dynamics of multimodal meaning emergence in interaction. To this end, I have worked in various interdisciplinary projects, investigating linguistic multimodality from a linguistic perspective in the fields of pragmatics, cognitive grammar, cognitive semantics, sign language research, and phenomenology.

Additionally, I am engaged in science communication, for example with the podcast Talking Bodies, the social media channel GestikInsights and my blog.

Scientific career

since 05/2024

Habilitation process (cumulative) on the topic "Dimensions of Gestural Recurrence: Forms, Meaning, and Stabilization" at the Georg-August University of Göttingen.

since 09/2022
Gepris
since 01/2020

Co-cordinator in the project "Multimodal Stancetaking: Expressive Movement and Affective Stance. Political Debates in the German Bundestag and the PolishSejm(funded by “Beethoven”; German Research Foundation / NCN).

Gepris
10/2016-09/2022

Post-Doc at the Chair of Language Use and Multimodal Communication, European University Viadrina

10/2015-09/2016

Substitute for the Professorship for Language Use and Multimodal Communication (W3), European University Viadrina.

02/2018-08/2022
10/2011-09/2015

Post-doc at the Chair of Language Use and Multimodal Communication, European University Viadrina.

10/2009-09/2011

Post-doc and co-head of the sub-project "Meaning Emergence in Language and Gesture", joint project "Body Language of Movement and Dance: Meaning Emergence, Linguization and Therapeutic Use" (BMBF).

07/2012

PhD with the thesis "Syntactic and semantic integration of gestures in language - structural, cognitive and conceptual aspects" at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), grade: summa cum laude.

08/2006-09/2010

Research assistant in the interdisciplinary research project "Towards a grammar of gesture: Evolution, brain, and linguistic structures", funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

07/2006

Master's degree from the Free University of Berlin (English, General and German Linguistics).

04/2004-03/2006

Tutor at the Chair of Psycholinguistics at the Free University of Berlin (Prof. Dr. Gisela Klann-Delius).

10/2001-07/2006

Member of the FU Gesture Project.

Dr. Silva Ladewig

Georg-August-University
Seminar für Deutsche Philologie
Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3
D-37073 Göttingen

Copyright © Silva H. Ladewig, 2024, alle Rechte vorbehalten.