EORC TALK: Geolingual Studies: A new research direction

During the last two years, the Department of English Linguistics and the Department of Remote Sensing at the University of Würzburg, in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), have been developing a new research initiative called Geolingual Studies (GLS). This innovative field combines theories and methods from linguistics, geography, and digital humanities to contribute to finding scientific solutions to current global challenges.

This project aims to enhance our understanding of the interplay between physical and social spaces. To do so, the physical space is represented by spatial data, such as satellite images and land cover classifications, while social media, news, surveys, interviews, and other text data that reflect and construct perceptions, attitudes, and emotions represent the social space. GLS primarily involves three broad research strands: urban spaces, migration and mobility, and megaevents. The urban spaces strand focuses on spatial and social dynamics in cities and the connection between them, which is key to understanding and addressing social and environmental issues in urban areas locally and globally. In the second research strand, human mobility and migrants’ discourses are assessed to enhance the representation of individuals from diverse social groups, often expressing their opinions and needs relating to their migration experience in multiple languages. The main objective of the mega-events research strand is to understand the different stages of human behavior, perceptions, discourses, and needs triggered by planned (Olympic Games, festivals, political summits) or unplanned (terror attacks, shootings, disasters, pandemics) events.

In this talk, we will illustrate the potential of the GLS framework by showing its application in concrete research projects which aim (i) to identify topics discussed by urban citizens, their spatial distribution, and the relationship between urban morphology and topics in New York City, (ii) to assess human mobility following the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the migrants’ interests and needs, and (iii) to investigate the use of two or more languages by migrants from Ukraine on social media in terms of its correlation with specific topics and stages of the migration process. You can find more information about the project at https://www.phil.uni-wuerzburg.de/gls/