September 25, 2025 - 9:00am
Linguistics scholars from all over the world spent their summer at University of Oregon gathering insights and expertise from world-renowned linguists when the school hosted the Linguistic Society of America’s Summer Institute. The five-week summer school is a biennial event and the UO’s Department of Linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences planned and executed the 2025 event.
“The Institute was intellectually stimulating, inspiring, and an amazing opportunity to teach and learn within a vibrant international community of brilliant minds,” said Kaori Idemaru, co-director of the Institute as well as professor and department head of East Asian Languages and Literatures in the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages.
Attendees chose from approximately 100 courses spread over two terms, special evening lectures and roundtable discussions during the week, and conferences on the weekends. Examples of courses include Language in Intelligent Machines, Linguistic Variation and Social Networks and Eye Tracking in Psycholinguistic Research.
This year 93 faculty and 244 students attended the Summer Institute.
“It's a great opportunity to learn about a variety of different topics — some very general, others very specific — from people who are at the forefront of that work,” said Peter Nyhuis, a postdoctoral researcher in the Surrey Morphology Group at the University of Surrey. “Unlike a typical academic conference, here you get a mix of students and experienced academics. It's a place for getting introduced to new ideas and for the presenters to have their work challenged and refined.”
Nyhuis studies how speakers understand and use phonological patterns in the context of extreme morphological complexity and said he learned a lot and was “exposed to new methods and concepts, many of which are outside my usual area of expertise.”
UO’s Linguistics department is one of the few linguistics departments in the country that emphasizes functional and usage-based, as opposed to generative (or ‘formal’), approaches to linguistics. This focus sets the department apart, fostering research that prioritizes language as an adaptive and socially embedded system, shaped by interaction and real-world usage. This focus was reflected in the theme of this year’s Institute, “Language in Use”.
Tilly Brooks, a doctoral student at both Stanford University and Yale Law School, studies the language of statutes and other sources of law, focusing on their linguistic properties.
“The theme here has been an amazing opportunity to expand the kinds of perspectives on linguistics I've been exposed to. My undergraduate focus and a lot of the work I do is generally very formalist, which is an approach I love, but I haven't seen everything that's out there,” said Brooks. “This has been a really exciting chance to broaden my horizons.”
For faculty who teach at the Summer Institute, it’s an opportunity to connect with people they’ve only known from afar or people in the field they admire and to establish relationships with students.
“There's a lot of us here with very diverse expertise: some overlapping, some not. That means there are a lot of people to talk to about ideas and interests, and many opportunities for future collaboration,” said Fermín Moscoso del Prado Martín, associate professor at the University of Cambridge.
Moscoso del Prado also emphasized the importance of connecting with peers while at the Summer Institute. "While people often separate the professional and personal parts, I don't think that's realistic. Collaborations often happen with people you like spending time with. So sharing dinners, drinks and casual conversations is actually very valuable.”
Professional opportunities are a main outcome of the Summer Institute, including for those who help plan the event. Several students in UO’s Linguistics department had a chance to get hands-on experience in areas such as event planning, outreach and social media promotion. Plus, they helped shape the education plan.
“Being a student, I think we could bring perspectives that other students attending the Institute might find valuable,” said Tamaya Levy, a doctoral student in linguistics and member of the organizing committee. “This is perhaps reflected in the events that took place such as the three-minute thesis and the poster sessions, which awarded prize money to students.”
The event also involved many moving parts and cross-campus collaboration, including scholars and students in the Schnitzer School and the East Asian Languages and Literatures department.
“We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from many participants,” said Idemaru. “Bringing it to life required more than a year of preparation and intense work during the event itself, especially from our UO student volunteers, who devoted their time and talent to keeping everything running smoothly. The UO’s Conference and Event Services were also a wonderful partner to work with. The outstanding outcome was the result of true synergistic collaboration among all.”
—By Jenny Brooks, College of Arts and Sciences