Angelika Kratzer writes:
I have good news to share: Manfred Krifka and I have just heard that the eight directors of SIAS (Some Institutes for Advanced Studies, comprising the Princeton, Radcliffe, Stanford, Berlin, Stockholm, Hebrew University institutes, as well as NIAS and the National Humanities Center) have chosen our joint proposal for a SIAS Summer Institute at their last meeting in June. Our proposal is entitled: “The Investigation of Linguistic Meaning: in the Armchair, in the Field, and in the Lab.” Typically two proposals are chosen every two years. We heard that this time, the selection was particularly difficult because only one proposal could be chosen for budgetary reasons. We are very happy that it was ours. We are particularly proud that our proposal convinced eight top scholars from very different fields (Humanities, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences).
A SIAS Summer Institute is, in fact, a two year mentoring program for 20 post-doctoral fellows (no more than 5 years from PhD) from Europe and the US. They will be brought together in two two-week summer institutes directed by us. We can invite up to four outside experts. For the Berlin segment of the Institute, we can also also rely on the resources of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and the ZAS (Center for General Linguistics). The program is jointly funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The funds (around $200,000) will be administered by the Berlin Wissenschaftskolleg and the National Center for the Humanities, which will also host the two Summer Institutes. The funds from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation have already been secured, and we can thus begin to recruit fellows and plan for the 2015 Summer Institute. The Mellon Foundation is expected to commit funding for the second phase of the program and the 2016 Summer Institute by the end of the year.
This grant will not consume resources from UMass, nor will it bring funds. It will, however, add to our reputation as a center for interdisciplinary research and innovation. It affirms our vision of linguistics as a bridge builder between the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Natural Sciences. It fits perfectly with our department’s efforts (currently spearheaded by Joe) towards a Cognitive Science Institute. It will contribute to international collaboration and tightly connect us to research on linguistic meaning in Europe. Personally, I am also interested in exploiting some of the expertise with collective interdisciplinary research for my undergraduate teaching.
