Alexander Bergs

Biography

Alexander Bergs received his PhD from Düsseldorf University in 2002 and his postdoctoral degree ('Habilitation') in 2005. He joined the Institute for English and American Studies of Osnabrück University, Germany, in 2006 when he became Full Professor and Chair of English Language and Linguistics. His research interests include, among others, language variation and change, constructional approaches to language, the role of context in language, the syntax/pragmatics interface and cognitive poetics. His works include several authored and edited books (Social Networks and Historical Sociolinguistics (2005), Modern Scots (2005), Contexts and Constructions (2008), Constructions and Language Change (2009)), a short textbook on Synchronic English Linguistics (2010),  the two-volume Handbook of English Historical Linguistics (2012, ed. with Laurel Brinton) and Understanding Language Change (2016, with Kate Burridge), as well as more than two dozen articles in high profile international journals and edited volumes.  

Alexander Bergs has taught at the Universities of Düsseldorf, Bonn, Santiago de Compostela, Catania, Vigo, Thessaloniki (Naxos), and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has organized several international workshops and conferences.

Apart from several terms as Director of the Institute of English and American Studies, as Dean of the Faculty of Linguistics and Literatures, and as member of the University Senate, he is one of the founders and directors of the Research Cluster for Cognition and Poetics at the University of Osnabrück

Education

M.A. in English and German, Düsseldorf 1999
PhD in English, Düsseldorf 2002
Postdoctoral Degree 'Habilitation', Düsseldorf 2005

Books