Alexandra N. Lenz

Biography

He is head of the recently founded (April 2016) research department ‘Variation und Wandel des Deutschen in Österreich’ (‘Variation and Change of German in Austria’) at the ACDH. The main focus of the research department is on the dynamics of the German language (and its varieties) in Austria. One central and current goal is the revival and new conception of work previously carried out by the ‘Wörterbuch der bairischen Mundarten in Österreich’ (‘Dictionary of the Bavarian Dialects in Austria’, WBÖ). The focal point of her own research lies in the areas of variationist linguistics, dialectology, language history, research into language attitudes, and corpus linguistics. She is Speaker of the Special Research Programme ‘German in Austria: Variation – Contact – Perception’ (FWF F060), which began on January 1, 2016, as well as leader of three of its nine subprojects. In addition, she is in the process of concluding two third-party-funded projects, which was completed in 2016: the DFG funded ‘Syntax hessischer Dialekte’ (‘Syntax of Hessian Dialects’) and the FWF, DFG, SNF funded D-A-CH-Projekt ‘Variantenwörterbuch des Deutsche–NEU: Die Standardsprache in Österreich, der Schweiz, Deutschland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Ostbelgien und Südtirol sowie Rumänien, Namibia und Mexiko’ (‘Lexicon of German Standard Varieties–NEW : The Standard Language in Austria, Switzerland, German, Lichtenstein, Luxemburg, Eupen-Malmédy, and South Tyrol as well as Romania, Namibia, and Mexico’).

Research Interest

She is professor of German Linguistics at the University of Vienna and Adjunct Professor at the Research Center Deutscher Sprachatlas (Marburg, Germany). She serves as a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, as Chairperson of the Wiener Sprachgesellschaft and as Vice Chairperson of the Internationale Gesellschaft für Dialektologie des Deutschen, as well as being a member of scientific advisory boards of several leading linguistic institutions in Europe (e.g. Institut für deutsche Sprache, Mannheim; Meertens Institut, Amsterdam).