Invited Speakers

Mirjam Fried is Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Charles University, where she has worked since 2011. Her expertise is in cognitive linguistics, especially the development of conceptual and analytic tools in Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics. Her research examines the grammatical and interactional organisation of spontaneously produced spoken language, with an empirical foundation in corpus data. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley, held faculty appointments in the United States (University of Oregon, UC Berkeley, and Princeton University), and has served in major leadership roles at Charles University, including as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and as Principal Investigator of a five-year European structural research project.

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Janet van Hell is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University, where she also serves as Co-Director of the Social, Life, and Engineering Sciences Imaging Center (SLEIC) and the Center for Language Science. She received her doctorate in 1998 from the University of Amsterdam and has built a research programme on bilingualism, second language learning, and language development across the lifespan. Through the Bilingualism and Language Development (BiLD) Lab, her work investigates cognitive and neurocognitive mechanisms that support multilingual language use, integrating behavioural, linguistic, and neuropsychological methods, including EEG/ERP techniques. She has published widely and is also known for outreach initiatives that bring language and brain research to broader communities.

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James H-Y. Tai (戴浩一) is Chair Professor of Linguistics at National Chung Cheng University, where he founded the Graduate Institute of Linguistics and the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his BA from National Taiwan University (1964) and his MA (1967) and PhD (1970) in Linguistics from Indiana University. His academic career includes positions at Southern Illinois University and The Ohio State University, with visiting appointments at MIT, the University of Massachusetts, and Cornell University, and he has also served as Adjunct Professor at Ohio State since 1995. His research spans Chinese linguistics (syntax, semantics, and pragmatics), cognitive linguistics, sign linguistics, and language and aging, and he has played a central role in advancing research on Taiwan Sign Language, including establishing the Taiwan Center for Sign Linguistics.

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