Geolingual Studies

Welcome!

We are a transdisciplinary team whose joint focus is to advance the investigation of urban spaces by examining their linguistic dynamics.

Geolingual Studies is an innovative area of research and teaching which takes a decisively applied linguistic approach and combines methodologies from linguistics, geography, digital humanities and natural language processing.

As researchers from the Department of English linguistics, we collaborate with a team of researchers from the Earth Observation Research Hub and the German Aerospace Center, who specialise in satellite remote sensing. We aim to assess the interrelationship between physical and socio-cultural space from a new perspective.

For this, the description of the physical environment is complemented by the linguistic assessment of social networks, identity constructions, discourses and the perception of space in a global and culture-specific context. We seek to bring together researchers from different fields and establish theories and methodologies that lend themselves to comparative analyses of language and space.

Click here for further information on our work and ways to collaborate with us.

Super Test Site Würzburg

As a result of the GLS workshop in September 2023, a collaboration campaign has developed between researchers from different disciplines who are all interested in the interrelationship of physical and social space and the impact on people. The idea is to coordinate different research strands on the same site and in the same timeframe. Read more here.

Coming soon: Geolingual Studies on Urban Space

Februar 2, 2026

Cover picture "Geolingual Studies on Urban Space" (Image: Carolin Biewer, Cover design: Edinburgh University Press)

We are delighted to announce that the first volume on Geolingual Studies (edited by Carolin Biewer, Lisa Lehnen, Ninja Schulz, and Hannes Taubenböck) will be published by Edinburgh University Press as part of the series New Directions in World Englishes Research (edited by Sarah Buschfeld) in August 2026. The volume combines methods from linguistics, geography and computational humanities to integrate the complexities of urban spaces into world Englishes research and provides case studies from various megacities, densely populated city-states and capitals around the world including London, Edinburgh, New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Davao City, Accra, and Mexico City. We would like to thank all contributors who made this project possible. Stay tuned for updates and see the EUP website for more details!

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New publication: Integrating corpus linguistic and NLP methods

Polarity of tweets in selected topics from London

The GLS team has published a new study in Corpus-based Studies across Humanities on "Integrating corpus linguistics and NLP methods to explore social media discourse from Edinburgh and London" that investigates the spatiality of topics and interpretability of polarity in tweets from posted from two urban areas. For more information, check our news section.

Conference HEPPsinki

On Wednesday, May 20, 2026, Corinna Keupp gave a talk titled “#JusticeForGrenfell - Identifying Emotional Response Patterns to Tragedy on Social Media” at the Sixth Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism, and Polarised Politics (HEPP6), held between the 18th and the 20th of May 2026 at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The corresponding study was developed at our Geolingual Studies research and teaching unit and focused on the spatial and temporal analysis of tweets related to the Grenfell Tower fire, which took place in London in 2017. Read more here.

Master thesis: Assessing the accessibility improvements, public perception and potential beneficiaries of cable car systems in Mexico City and Medellin

März 26, 2026

MSc defense_Torres Lopez - Picture of Angie Torres Lopez (left) and Richard Lemoine Rodríguez (right) at MSc defense — Picture of Angie Torres Lopez (left) and Richard Lemoine Rodríguez (right) at MSc defense

On 26 March 2026, MSc student Angie Torres López successfully defended her Master’s thesis titled “Assessing the accessibility improvements, public perception and potential beneficiaries of cable car systems in Mexico City and Medellin”, supervised by our team members Prof. Hannes Taubenböck and Dr. Richard Lemoine-Rodríguez.

In her thesis, she examined how urban cable car systems affect mobility and social inclusion in informal settlements in Mexico City and Medellín. Read more here

GLS at TU Dresden

Dezember 15, 2025

On 15 December 2025, the Geolingual Studies team was invited to TU Dresden. Ninja Schulz and Lisa Lehnen gave a guest talk with the title “Mapping the city? Geolingual approaches to urban spaces”. Following the kind invitation by Dr. Sven Leuckert, they introduced the basic ideas of GLS and four case studies on urban spaces to students with an interest in interdisciplinary approaches to language and space/place.