Team

Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska

University of Opole, Institute of Linguistics
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Associate Professor and Head of the Department of English, who specializes in political discourse analysis, policy and science communication, multimodality as well as popular media and journalism studies. She co-edits Res Rhetorica, an international open-access journal focused on rhetoric and linguistics. Since 2019 she has been involved with FORTHEM Alliance: as a member of FORTHEM Lab Multilingualism in School and Higher Education, and as a University of Opole representative in Labs and Co-creation Mission Board. She managed communications as Work Package Leader in H2020 Science with and for Society R&I project FIT FORTHEM (2021-2023).

Find her publishing record, experience and achievements through ORCID.

Team EN/PL: As CORECON research director she oversees the project’s academic outputs and heads the English-language media research subgroup.

Contact: molekk@uni.opole.pl

Simina Terian

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Associate Professor with the Department of Romance Studies at the Faculty of Letters and Arts, where she specializes in Romanian Syntax, Pragmatics, Digital Tools in Romanian Language Learning, and Romanian as a Foreign Language. She has published three books on discourse analysis, grammar theory and analysis, and a cognitive analysis of Romanian idiomatic expressions respectively. She has been a member of several national research and institutional development projects. PI of the project The Fake News Phenomenon in Romanian. A Discursive-Computational Approach (FAKEROM) – an interdisciplinary approach joining together the humanities and computer science, surveying a large-sized corpus, and operating with highly granular categories in classifying news reports into different types. PI of the research grant The Preservation, Transformation and Study of Romanian Linguistic Heritage in the Context of Globalization (PATLIRO), focusing on the use of digital tools in the study of Romanian as a foreign language.

Team RO: Head of the Romanian-language media research subgroup

Contact: simina.terian@ulbsibiu.ro

Przemysław Wilk

University of Opole

Senior lecturer with a PhD in linguistics. He specializes in media discourses from a cognitive and critical perspective (e.g., Stance in press discourse: The case of Poles and Poland in the Guardian; Construing the Other: On the ideology-laden construals of Europeans in the Guardian) working extensively on figurative mechanism of creating meaning (Some Implications for Developing Learners’ Figurative Language Competence Across Modalities: Metaphor, Metonymy and Blending in the Picture Modality; ‘Rocking the boat’ and ‘putting spanners in the works’: On different metaphorical conceptualizations of the European Union) and rhetoric of political discourse (Casual, Colloquial, Commonsensical: A News Values Stylistic Analysis of a Populist Newsfeed; Conceptual silencing as a rhetorical tool. A cognitive lexical semantics study of the lexical item Europe). He has experience supervising university students’ BA and MA projects (over 100). He has participated in FORTHEM Multilingualism Lab and is currently collaborating on an Erasmus+ Teacher Academies project.

Team PL: (Sub-)team leader – Experienced Researcher I

Contact: pwilk@uni.opole.pl

Marcin Deutschmann

University of Opole
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Senior Lecturer at the University of Opole, trained in sociology (MA) and linguistics (PhD), he specializes in rhetoric and critical discourse studies with a main focus on their social and political dimensions. His doctoral dissertation was dedicated to rhetoric in political comments on social media. In his scientific activity, he looks at the points of discourse where antisystem discourses have challenged mainstream ideologies. A critical lens and seeing language and ideologies as crucial parts of social life are characteristic of all his scientific endeavours. He is a researcher experienced with various research methods, including surveying, interviewing, participatory action research, citizen science, and qualitative, quantitative, and mixed data analysis methods. Since 2019 he has been an active member of the FORTHEM Alliance, especially Multilingualism Lab, where he was an output co-manager in the Citizen Science Project. He authored, coauthored, or coedited over 10 publications, including books and scientific papers.

Find his publishing record, experience and achievements through ORCID.

Team PL: Post-doctoral researcher.

Contact: mdeutschmann@uni.opole.pl

Rafał Krzysztof Matusiak

University of Opole

He is an independent scholar. He studied Law (2017), English Philology (2014), Spanish Philology (2011), Bulgarian Philology (2010), and Russian Philology (2009) at the University of Silesia in Katowice, where he also obtained a doctoral degree in linguistics (2020). He completed a two-semester course in Mediation (2021) at the University of Wrocław. He is currently studying for an MA in Economics at the University of Economics in Katowice. His research interests include the language of law and economics, eristic, conflict management and alternative dispute resolution. He is the author of several publications, e.g. Linguistic Indeterminacy in the Criminal Law (2021), Linguistic and cultural identity of the Ukrainian diaspora in Poland (2023).

Find his publishing record, experience and achievements through ORCID.

Team PL: As postdoctoral researcher III, he will contribute to the study of the topic as reflected in multimodal discourses, publish a scientific article and author a chapter for the final volume of the project. 

Contact: rafal.matusiak@uni.opole.pl

Jędrzej Olejniczak

University of Opole

Senior Lecturer at Opole University, Institute of Linguistics. Corpus linguist with a background in translation studies. His doctoral thesis was a quantitative account of the atypical patterns of linguistic behaviour in literary texts translated from English into Polish. His research includes quantitative studies in social media (discourse of twitch.tv, Facebook debates on apostasy), quantitative studies (interdisciplinary applications of corpus linguistics) and translation studies (corpus-based studies of atypical patterns in translation).

Find his publishing record, experience and achievements through ORCID.

Team EN/PL: Corpus linguist for the Polish and English teams. In the project, he is primarily responsible for collection and processing of the corpus data.

Contact: jedrzej.olejniczak@uni.opole.pl

Robert Radziej

University of Opole
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

PhD Student of linguistics. His research interest focuses on critical discourse analysis, representations of artificial intelligence by science communication outlets, and multimodality. He is a leader of an international student-driven project within FORTHEM Lab Multilingualism in School and Higher Education called “Which English?”, focusing on the implications of English-language hegemony as a current global lingua franca.

Find his publishing record, experience and achievements through ORCID.

Team EN/PL: Junior Researcher

Contact: robert.radziej@uni.opole.pl

Isabela-Anda Dragomir

“Nicolae Bălcescu” Land Forces Academy of Sibiu, Faculty of Military Sciences, Department of Applied Social Sciences and Humanities

Starting with 2001, I have been teaching general, military, and specialized English at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Since 2013, when I obtained my certification as a teacher trainer, I have conducted courses, workshops, and seminars for foreign language teachers in the military system, with focus on teaching English as a foreign language, English for specific purposes and communicative language skills. As far as my academic research is concerned, I have focused on 2 main directions: the pedagogy of teaching English in the military; in the field of linguistics, on the Critical Discourse Analysis of the ideology of power in military/NATO discourse, communication in the military organization, and ideologically driven discourses, as part of my doctoral studies, later materialized in some of the subsequent publications.

Find her publishing record, experience and achievements through Google Scholar.

Team EN: Post-doctoral Researcher/Scientific Researcher/Philology Researcher

Contact: dragomir.isabela@armyacademy.ro

Corina Selejan

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Assistant Professor with the Department of Anglo-American and German Studies at Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu, where she specializes in contemporary Anglo-American literature. She has co-edited special issues of American, British and Canadian Studies and East-West Cultural Passage. Her publications include “The Vividness of Hunger in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing and Herta Müller’s Atemschaukel: A Cognitivist Reading” and “For the Love of Words: On Language and Cinematography in Academic Novels and Films”. She has taken part in INTELLIT, a project related to the preservation of Romanian literary heritage and the use of digital solutions for extracting and systematizing knowledge.

Team EN: Researcher

Contact: corina.selejan@ulbsibiu.ro

Ecaterina Ilis

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

My professional journey spans across translations, public relations & social media, and, more recently, education, with a focus on teaching English as a foreign language. My primary research interest revolves around discourse studies, particularly delving into the intricate realm of fake news. My doctoral thesis investigates the infodemic during the coronavirus pandemic from a critical discourse studies perspective. In my recent scholarly article, “Interpretative Repertoires of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal in Romania“, I delve into discourse patterns related to vaccine hesitancy in the Romanian context, particularly regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. My research is dedicated to unraveling the discourse strategies employed by purveyors of false information and understanding the cognitive biases that make individuals vulnerable to these narratives. My ultimate goal is to develop effective tools and strategies to counteract the dissemination of misinformation and to steer readers towards credible sources of information.

Team EN: Researcher (2024)

Contact: ecaterina.ilis@ulbsibiu.ro

Crina Neacșu

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

PhD Candidate in Philology and Research Assistant at the Faculty of Letters and Arts at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Through her PhD thesis, she seeks to analyze the evolution of the representation of queer minorities in Romanian media discourse post-2000, employing the framework of critical discourse analysis. This research project builds on her MA dissertation on trans/transgen/transgender vs. transsexual vs. travestite identities in Romanian media, 2010-2022. She took part in DIGIROPO – The digital analysis of Romanian poetry from its origins to 1900: Stylistic regimes, thematic patterns, geographical dispersions and is currently taking part in NETSIM – Networks of (dis)similarities: The circulation of Western Romance literatures in Eastern Europe. Her research interests and papers primarily focus on language studies, discourse analysis, critical race theory, gender theory, and queer theory. 

Team EN: Researcher

Contact: crina.neacsu@ulbsibiu.ro

Radu Drăgulescu

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Professor and Head of the Department of Romance Studies of the Faculty of Letters and Arts, with special interest in General and Applied Linguistics, History of Romanian Literary Language, Phytonymy, RLS, CDA. Since 2022 he is a member of FORTHEM Lab Multilingualism in School and Higher Education.Member of the Research Grant Support for institutional development and increasing the involvement and VISIBILITY of UManist research at “Lucian Blaga” University in Sibiu. Member of the Research Grant Preservation, transformation and study of the Romanian Linguistic Heritage in the context of globalization.

Find his publishing record, experience and achievements through ResearchGate.

Team RO: Within the project he will contribute by selecting the material in order to compose the corpus, arranging and categorising this material and by analysing and interpreting the collected data.

Contact: radu.dragulescu@ulbsibiu.ro

Iulia-Maria Ticărău

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

PhD candidate and teaching assistant with Department of Romance Studies at “Lucian Blaga” University, Sibiu. She teaches Romanian language seminars (Normative Grammar, Language and Communication) and Romanian as a foreign language. She is involved in another project titled: Prezervarea, transformarea și studierea PATrimoniului LIngvistic ROmânesc în contextul globalizării (PATLIRO)/Preservation, Transformation and Study of the Romanian Linguistic Patrimony in the Context of Globalization. Relevant publications: “Ce e nou în DOOM 3? Aspecte generale” /“What’s New in DOOM 3? General Aspects”; “DOOM 3 și cuvintele împrumutate din limba engleză. Modificări și adăugări” /“DOOM 3 And Loanwords from English. Changes And Additions”, “Predarea limbii române ca limbă străină în spaţiul on-line”/ “Teaching Romanian as a Foreign Language in the Online Space”

Team RO: quantitative and comparative analysis

Contact: iulia.deaconu@ulbsibiu.ro

Minodora Sălcudean

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Associate Professor Dr. Habil. at the “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, researcher in Communication Sciences, with special interest in journalism and media discourse. Member of international project teams such as SDGs Journalism Reporting and InMedia that ended in 2023. Associate researcher within the Ecojust research project, currently taking place in Romania. Author of scientific articles on the interference of journalism with social networks (here), the role and responsibilities of journalists during crisis (here), aspects of hate speech in the Romanian media (here), etc.

Find her publishing record, experience and achievements through ORCID.

Team RO: Researcher; Media Expert

Contact: minodora.salcudean@ulbsibiu.ro

Monica Borș

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Letters and Arts of the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Her areas of expertise include semantics, phonetics, morphology, lexicology, and Romanian as a foreign language (mainly for Erasmus students). Her PhD thesis investigates the motivation of the linguistic sign in the proper names of the characters in Mircea Eliade’s work, seen as nominal mythologies, using the tools of mythological linguistics, language poetics and interpretative semantics. Most of the articles she has authored are analyses of the dynamics of contemporary Romanian language: semantic, phonetic and morphosyntactic changes of words observed on cartoon channels, as well as in the print media and on social networks, looking at how certain lexical coinages, semantic mutations or hybrid constructions enter the speaker’s linguistic consciousness and/or are recorded in dictionaries. She is currently a team member in the following projects: Strengthening the internationalization process of ULBS in the European University Alliance, Preservation, Transformation and Study of Romanian Linguistic Heritage in the Context of Globalization (PATLIRO), Support for institutional development and increased involvement and VIZIbility of UManist research at “Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu (VIZIUM)”.

Find her publishing record, experience and achievements through ResearchGate.

Team RO

Contact: monica.bors@ulbsibiu.ro

Denisa Maria Bâlc

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Doctoral student in the field of Philology and a Assistant Teacher at the Faculty of Letters and Arts, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. She took part in several projects, such as: MDRR – The Digital Museum of the Romanian Novel (1901-1932): corpus-based analysis; FAKEROM – Fake News in Romanian: A Joint Discursive and Computational Approach; TEHNE – The Development of New and Emerging Technologies in the Context of Stimulating Research Excellence at LBUS; PATLIRO – The Preservation, Transformation and Study of the Romanian Linguistic Heritage in the Context of Globalization. Her interest in the field of Language Studies and Discourse Analysis can also be seen in the articles and studies she published: “Lirica blagiană – (re)lecturi cantitative. Negația” [“Blaga’s Poetry – Quantitative (Re)Readings. Negation”], “Înspre o dinamică a paranteticului: construcțiile incidente în momentele și schițele lui Caragiale (I)” [“Toward a Dynamics of Parentheticals: Incidental Constructions in the Moments and Sketches of Caragiale (I)”], etc.

Team RO: compiling the corpus, conducting analyses.

Contact: denisa.fratean@ulbsibiu.ro

Bogdan Vătavu

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

Assistant Professor at Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, where he teaches various disciplines in the field of Library and Information Science. He is a graduate in History at Babeș-Bolyai Univesity Cluj-Napoca, Romania, where he also obtained his PhD title, in 2019. His academic interests span from social history, to library and information science and the digital humanities. His work is generally focused around the history of crime in Romania and its representations in popular culture and, more recently, around critical information literacy issues and the state of librarianship in Romania. He is also a member of the project ECOJUST – Doing Environmental InJustice: A Theory in Praxis.

Find his publishing record, experience and achievements through ResearchGate.

Team RO: Post-doctoral researcher

Contact: bogdan.vatavu@ulbsibiu.ro

David Morariu

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu

PhD Candidate in Philology and Teaching Assistant of Romanian with the Department of Romance Studies at the Faculty of Letters and Arts. He holds seminars in General Linguistics, Pragmatics, Syntax and Stylistics and his research interests include corpus linguistics, online pragmatics, digital humanities, neurolinguistics and language impairments. He has taken part in DMRN (The Digital Museum of the Romanian Novel:1845-1947) and FAKEROM (Fake News in Romanian: A Joint Discursive and Computational Approach), two research projects during which he has specialized in corpus-based analysis and media discourse, and he is currently focusing on a neurodidactic approach to learning Romanian as a foreign language using digital tools in PATLIRO (Preserving, Transforming and Studying the Romanian Linguistic Heritage in the Context of Globalization).

Find his publishing record, experience and achievements through ORCID.

Team RO: Research Assistant

Contact: david.morariu@ulbsibiu.ro