PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Roland Schäfer

Roland Schäfer is a linguist whose work connects computational language methods with questions about German grammar. He co-developed tools for building web corpora, led a DFG project on German web grammar, and used Bayesian inference to model language registers. His studies of German writing combine large corpora with experiments to examine the boundary between syntax and morphology. As of October 2026, he is a professor of German Linguistics at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and directs its Institute for German Linguistics.

Works
57
Citations
802
h-index
12

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2008

    A doctorate in theoretical linguistics

    He studies Japanese and Sinology in Marburg, then Indo-European and General Linguistics, before completing a theoretical linguistics doctorate at Göttingen in 2008.

  2. 2011–2012

    Göttingen professorships

    He represents professorships in Göttingen from 2011 to 2012.

  3. 2012

    Tools for web corpora

    At a 2012 workshop, he and Felix Bildhauer present their texrex software and the COW corpora as tools for processing huge web crawls into clean, general-purpose corpora.

  4. 2015–2018

    A DFG project on web grammar

    From 2015 to 2018, he leads a DFG project at Freie Universität Berlin on German web grammar and develops the COW family of very large, processed web corpora across European languages.

  5. 2019

    Probabilistic German Morphosyntax

    In 2019, his habilitation, Probabilistic German Morphosyntax, earns him the venia legendi for German and General Linguistics at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

  6. 2020

    Modeling language registers

    In 2020, he and Felix Bildhauer present a probabilistic approach to registers in large corpora, using Bayesian inference and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to infer potential registers.

  7. 2022–2024

    Jena professorship and grammar research

    In 2022, Jena appoints him professor of German Linguistics with a focus on grammar and lexicon. In 2024, he coauthors a study of German noun+verb units that can be written as one or two words; large corpus studies and a controlled production experiment support their analysis.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor and institute director

    As of October 2026, he is a professor of German Linguistics at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena and directs the Institute for German Linguistics.

Career

  1. Since 2022Friedrich Schiller University JenaProfessor of German Linguistics
  2. 2015–2018Freie Universität BerlinProject leader
  3. 2011–2012University of GöttingenProfessor

Education

  1. 2008University of GöttingenDoctorate in theoretical linguistics
  2. Philipps University of MarburgJapanese and Sinology; Indo-European and General Linguistics

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Building Large Corpora from the Web Using a New Efficient Tool Chain2012 · Language Resources and Evaluation · 207 citations
  2. Processing and querying large web corpora with the COW14 architecture2015 · 145 citations
  3. Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies2013 · 122 citationsWith Dan Roth and Ido Dagan
  4. Situating language register across the ages, languages, modalities, and cultural aspects: Evidence from complementary methods2023 · Frontiers in Psychology · 40 citations
  5. Web Corpus Construction2013 · Synthesis lectures on human language technologies · 38 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Friedrich Schiller University Jena. 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.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Friedrich Schiller University Jena. 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.
  3. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Friedrich Schiller University Jena. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  4. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Freie Universität Berlin. 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.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. Was ist Sprache überhaupt? uni-jena.de. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Einführung in die grammatische Beschreibung des Deutschen: Dritte, überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage langsci-press.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. Establishing Gold Standards for Web Corpora grammis.ids-mannheim.de. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Prof. Dr. phil. Roland Schäfer - SFB 1412 sfb1412.hu-berlin.de. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Projects | Roland Schäfer rolandschaefer.net. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Newly appointed professors 2022 | Office for Academic Appointments uni-jena.de. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Institute Leadership and Academic Staff | Institute for German Linguistics gw.uni-jena.de. Checked 20 October 2026.