Elected and Appointed Officers of the GSFL Executive Council

Gaby is a PhD student who also works at a German Federal Agency. Her doctoral thesis involves testing the reliability of qualitative markers of authorship in German Whatsapp messages. She holds an MA in Applied Linguistics (University of Bonn, Germany), a PG Diploma in Forensic Linguistics (Aston University, UK), and a BA in English Studies, Linguistics, and Phonetics (University of Cologne, Germany).

As the GSFL Roundtable Onsite Conference Coordinator, she is responsible for not only helping the Presidency to organize the GSFL Roundtable , but also providing support services to the GSFL membership throughout the year. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Sofia is a second year MA student of Linguistics at Aarhus University and holds a BA in Linguistics from Aarhus University. Her interests lie primarily in the areas of Forensic Linguistics, conversation analysis, computer-mediated communication, and the proliferation of pseudoscience. She is the former co-chief editor of Lingoblog (www.lingoblog.dk/en), a popular science blog about linguistics publishing in Danish, English, Dutch, Spanish, and German. She is currently pursuing a PhD at Aarhus University. Her plans are to investigate the linguistic strategies of sexual predators during the online grooming of minors.

As the GSFL Student Activities Coordinator, Sofia is responsible for devising events to support GSFL students from the BA to the PhD. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Sarah earned her doctorate in Linguistics at Cornell University (USA) in 2018. She received her MA in Linguistics from Cornell University (USA) in 2016, and her BA in Linguistics from Princeton University (USA) in 2013. Her main research interest is exploring fairness issues that arise from ambiguous and vague language in US statutes, contracts, and jury instructions. Her doctoral dissertation explored the meaning and the use of the word “reasonable” in state jury instructions. The study utilizes three different perspetives: theoretical linguistics, corpus linguistics, and experimentation. Her MA thesis dealt with ambiguity in the interpretation of the word “or” in US perjury statutes.

As the GSFL Membership Officer for North America, she is responsible for helping the GSFL presidency in administrative matters and in building up the GSFL membership base in North America. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Meike is a PhD candidate in Forensic Phonetics at Leiden University (The Netherlands). Her work focusses on the effect of including recordings in a second language on the quality and potential of forensic speaker comparisons. She has a background in investigative criminology, legal psychology, authorship disguise, and bias in expert decisions. Meike also assists in speech and language analysis in forensic cases which she hopes to continue after completing her PhD.

As the GSFL Environmental Advisor, she is responsible for advising the GSFL Executive Council on ecological issues and she produces a quarterly newsletter that features information on promoting and protecting the planet. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Athina is an official translator for Greek, English, and German. In 2014, she completed her BA (Hons.) at the Department of Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpreting at the Ionian University (Greece). During her studies, she spent a year as an Ersamus exchange student at the Faculty of Translation Studies, Languages, and Cultural Studies in Germersheim (University of Mainz, Germany) and an additional six months at Hildesheim. In 2015, she completed her MA in Forensic Linguistics at Aston University (UK). Her research centers on Legal Translation, Courtroom Interpreting, and Native Language Identification.

As the GSFL Calendar Officer, she is responsible for maintaining the calendar of upcoming events and for issuing a bi-monthly newsletter that features calendar highlights. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Karin is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Chair of English Linguistics (Prof. Meierkord) at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. She also serves as a German Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) in Ramstein. Her research spans fluency in courtroom speech, L2 prosody, second language acquisition, language attitudes, and dialect leveling within military
contexts.

As the GSFL Media Officer, she is responsible for the quarterly Media Newsletter that features recent releases in forensic linguistics, forensic speech sciences, and allied fields. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Karoline finished her PhD in English and American Studies with a focus on Linguistics at the University of Graz (Austria) in 2017. She also holds a BSc in Health and Nursing Science from the Medical University of Graz (Austria). In her dissertation, she focused on linguistic disguise in threatening messages and ransom demands. Currently, she is employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of English Studies. Her main research interests lie in the area of authorship studies and profiling, threatening messages, (identity) disguise, and courtroom discourse. Outside of forensic linguistics, her interests lie in the areas of discourse analysis, ideology, and sociolinguistics. She obtained the Forensic Linguistics First Certificate and the Advanced Certificate from the Forensic Linguistics Institute in 2015 and 2016.

As the GSFL Membership Officer for Europe, she is responsible for assisting the GSFL President in not only administrative matters, but also in building up the GSFL European membership base. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Ulrike studied English and German Linguistics at the German Universities of Cologne and Hamburg. In 2021, she completed her PhD at Heidelberg University in Germany. Her doctoral dissertation involved a discriminative stylistic analysis of German right-wing extremist threat messages and left-wing extremist responsibility claims to detect linguistic and text-type patterns between and within both corpora. After obtaining her degree, she began work at the Cusanuswerk e.V., a scholarship institution. There she is responsible for student mentorship, consultation, and stipend administration. Ulrike has been a member of the GSFL Executive Council since 2015 and has held various elected and appointed positions on the Council.

As the GSFL Ethics Officer, she is responsible for developing the GSFL Guidelines for Ethical Research and for developing resources (e.g, trainings, readings, conferences, etc.) for GSFL members on ethical behavior in the forensic sciences. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Helen completed her B.A. (Hons.) in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Salford, UK, and later began an M.A. in Theoretical Linguistics in Cognition in Leiden, The Netherlands. Subsequently, she got the opportunity to transfer to an M.Sc. in Computational Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart, in Germany, which she completed in 2021. She is especially interested in extremism, radicalisation, and hate speech, and is filled with excitement and dread, in equal measure, at how accessible these things are online. This area holds some challenges in capturing abstract phenomena computationally, through language, and she hopes to be able to develop tools for the field in the future. She currently works as a technical writer.

As a GSFL Social Media Officer, she is responsible for moderating and administering the GSFL Social Media groups (e.g., Facebook, Mastadon, LinkedIn, etc.). She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.

Rositsa recently completed her MA in English, Spanish, and Sociology at the University of Cologne (Germany). Within forensic linguistics, her primary areas of interests lie in the language of the legal process. More specifically, she is interested in linguistic tactics used during courtroom proceedings and police interrogations of vulnerable witnesses such as children and non-native speakers. Her dream is to use her skills to advance the public and academic awareness of FL/FP research throughout the Slavic and Germanic-speaking world.

As the GSFL Events Officer, she is responsible for producing the monthly events newsletter for the GSFL. She is a voting member of the GSFL Executive Council.