Participates in EU Financed Language Research Project

NHH's Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication participates in a new EU financed research project concerning language resources and terminology for professional domains. "By participating in the project we will establish closer ties to a highly competent multidisciplinary network of researchers and business people," says NHH's project leader, Gisle Andersen.

22.01.2010 - Hallvard Lyssand

The EU project CLARA - Common Language Resources and their Applications is a Marie Curie Initial Training Network receiving funding from the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme.

NHH's Department of Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication is among the participants in the project.

One of the aims of the network is to facilitate work for young researchers, and part of the projects 30 mill. NOK funding will be spent on positions for up to 17 PhD students.

The Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication is one of the nine hosts who offer research training for Early Stage Researchers. Other participants are the universities in Bergen, Barcelona, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Prague and Tubingen.

Multidisciplinary research network

Professional knowledge domains, such as economy, energy and medicine, present special challenges to correct understanding, especially across languages.

The project will carry out research on theoretical, methodological and technical topics relating to the task of harmonising language resources and terminology for professional domains.

The local project group consists of Gisle Andersen (project leader), Marita Kristiansen, Sunniva Whittaker and Magnar Brekke. They will be joined by a senior guest researcher and a PhD scholar.

"By participating in the project we will establish closer ties to a highly competent multidisciplinary research network comprising linguists, language technologists, software developers and business people," Andersen says.

"Being a part of EU's 7th Framework Programme will also make our department and faculty more visible internationally. In addition, CLARA represents a continuation of our long standing cooperation with the University of Bergen, as they have the coordinating responsibility for the project," he adds.

Recruitment and training

The departments recruitment of a PhD candidate is well under way.

"Researcher mobility is a requirement of the Marie Curie-network, and candidates for the PhD position here at NHH must come from outside Norway. The candidates that are hired will have opportunities to visit the other members of the CLARA network and participate in research training courses and such," says Andersen.

NHH will also organise a researcher training course on integration of terminological language resources across domains and languages in September 2010. The course will be open for participants from outside the network.

For more information, see the CLARA website