PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Ekaterina Shutova

Also known as Katia

Ekaterina Shutova is a natural language processing researcher whose work helps AI systems interpret metaphor and extends language technology across languages and cultures. She completed a Cambridge PhD on figurative language in 2011, worked at Berkeley and Cambridge, and became an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam by 2018. She coauthored an ACL Outstanding Paper on language-model benchmarks in 2023 and received a 2024 ERC Consolidator Grant for CulturAL, a project on cross-lingual language technology and cultural alignment. In 2025 she served as an ACL Program Chair; as of October 2026, she is an Associate Professor at Amsterdam and an ELLIS Fellow.

Now at
Institute for Logic, Language and Computation

Timeline

  1. 2007–2011

    A Cambridge PhD on figurative language

    From 2007 to 2011, she researches figurative language at the University of Cambridge under Simone Teufel and completes a PhD in 2011. Her thesis develops an open-domain system for metaphor identification and interpretation in unrestricted text.

  2. By 2016

    A Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship

    By 2016, she is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cambridge's Computer Laboratory. Her earlier roles include work at the International Computer Science Institute and UC Berkeley's Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

  3. 2016

    Metaphor: A Computational Perspective

    She coauthors Metaphor: A Computational Perspective with Tony Veale and Beata Beigman Klebanov, a survey of computational approaches to metaphor.

  4. August 2018

    Assistant Professor in Amsterdam

    In August 2018, she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Logic, Language and Computation. Her research focuses on computational semantics, figurative language processing, multilingual NLP and cognitively driven semantics.

  5. 2023

    An ACL Outstanding Paper

    She coauthors “What’s the Meaning of Superhuman Performance in Today’s NLU?”, which questions claims that pretrained language models have superhuman language abilities and critiques their evaluation benchmarks. ACL selects it as an Outstanding Paper in 2023.

  6. December 2024

    An ERC grant for CulturAL

    In December 2024, she receives an ERC Consolidator Grant for CulturAL. The project develops cross-lingual transfer for LLMs in low-resource languages and aligns them with diverse cultural contexts.

  7. 2025

    Program Chair for ACL

    She serves as an ACL 2025 Program Chair; the conference lists her affiliations as the University of Amsterdam and Stanford University.

  8. As of October 2026

    Associate Professor and ELLIS Fellow

    She is an Associate Professor at the ILLC, University of Amsterdam, where she leads the Amsterdam Natural Language Understanding Lab and the NLP & Digital Humanities research unit. In October 2026, she joins ELLIS as a Fellow.

Career

  1. Since 2018University of AmsterdamAssistant Professor
  2. NowInstitute for Logic, Language and ComputationLead
  3. University of CambridgeLeverhulme Early Career Fellow

Education

  1. 2011University of CambridgePhD

From the biography.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of Amsterdam. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes University of Amsterdam. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  3. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Amsterdam. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  4. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Amsterdam. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Ekaterina Shutova yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Department of Computer Science and Technology: List of PhD students by supervisor cl.cam.ac.uk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Simone Teufel cl.cam.ac.uk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Computational approaches to figurative language cl.cam.ac.uk. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Metaphor: A Computational Perspective morganclaypoolpublishers.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Grasping the finer point: Metaphor identification in text and brain imaging data nlp.stanford.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. What’s the Meaning of Superhuman Performance in Today’s NLU? aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Best Papers - ACL 2023 2023.aclweb.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Three UvA researchers receive ERC Consolidator Grants uva.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Katia Shutova is awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant illc.uva.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Organizing Committee - ACL 2025 2025.aclweb.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. Katia Shutova - CERTAIN certain-ai.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.
  12. ELLIS Amsterdam Welcomes 10 New Fellows and Scholars ivi.fnwi.uva.nl. Checked 21 October 2026.