Awards

2022 Recipient of the 2022 UCONN/AAUP Career Excellence Award for Research and Creativity

2019 Recipient of The CLAS Faculty Research Excellence Award in the Humanities. University of Connecticut.

2019 Recipient of The Faculty Excellence in Research and Creativity – Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Award. [This award is given by the UConn Foundation Alumni Relations Office]

2025 – 2026 UConn’s Humanities Institute: Fellow

2017 – 2018 UConn’s Humanities Institute: Fellow

1999 – 2000 Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Arts and Sciences. Skidmore College, NY (funded by the Luce Foundation). On the subject of Human Creativity in the Arts and Sciences.

1990 – 1991 The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) Language acquisition

1993 – 1994 The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) Word prosodic systems (ESF-project)

Grants

Netherlands, Europe

1997-2000: Member of the coordinating committee of a European Science foundation (ESF) network (called INTERSIGN) in the area of sign language. This project involved 8 researchers and approximately 30 guest participants.

1990s: Four grants for phd-student projects from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO): (V. Lit, Levelt, Fikkert, Polgárdi), and three post-doc positions (Visch, v. Oostendorp, Rowicka).

1990s SignPhon: Two grants from NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) and a grant from the Gratama Foundation and the Faculty of Arts in Leiden. This project (involving two PhD-students and several research assistants) aimed at establishing a lexical database of sign from Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN).

1990-1994: Theme-coordinator of an international research group consisting of approximately 20 linguists working on “word prosodic systems of European languages” as part of a large 5-year project financed by the European Science Foundation (project name: EUROTYP). This project involved organizing 10 workshops (1990 Leiden (2x), 1991 Pisa, Salzburg, 1992 Essex, San Sebastian, 1993 Konstanz, Lund, 1994 Strasbourg, Utrecht) and editing of a book (approximately 1000 pp.) which appeared in 1999 (Mouton de Gruyter).

1990-1991: Co-organizer and co-coordinator of an international theme group on the logical problem of language acquisition at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (NIAS). This group consisted of appr. 10 researchers from the Netherlands and the US.

USA

2011-2013/4 NSF grant: “SignTyp Continuation: A cross-linguistic database of signs,” Proposal number 1049510 ($300,000).

2011-2013 NSF grant: StressTyp2 ($300,000). NSF Proposal No: 1123661 Collaborative Proposal: StressTyp2: A Database for Word Accentual Patterns in the World’s Languages.

2006-2008 NSF grant SignTyp ($200,000). Development of a cross-linguistic database of signs. (BCS-0544944)

University of Connecticut

2024 GEOC award for course development (Evolution of Language)

2019 – 2020 SCHARP Project: Development program for the academic year 2019-2020 for a project entitled The dance of movement: A study of meaningful movement across art forms and academic disciplines. The SCHARP project is run by the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR), in partnership with the Humanities Institute.

2018 Small grant from UConn’s Humanities Institute ($700) for project on iconicity on sign languages

2017 SHARE Project: The linguistic analysis of graphic novels/comics (Student: Matthew Henderson)

2015 – 2016 Small grant from UConn’s Humanities Institute ($1,000) for UConn Graphic Narrative Initiative

2014 – 2015 Small grant from UConn’s Humanities Institute ($1,000) for UConn Graphic Narrative Initiative

2010 – 2011 Small Faculty grant ($1,500) for editing work on Word Accent book

2009 – 2010 Large Faculty Grant ($16,000)

2008 Small grant from the UC Research Foundation for the First SignTyp conference ($750)

2008 – 2010 GEOC award for course development ($10,000)