GerCoLiNet is intended to stimulate the acquisition of expertise and independent research among advanced MA students and doctoral candidates in the field of German and Contrastive linguistics in the European context. There is a focus on the use/exploration of data literacy, autonomous analysis and scientific presentation of the results of small contrastive-oriented linguistic pilot studies.

The corresponding modules from a theoretical, methodological and empirical perspective include lectures, possibly with a corpus-based outlook, and practical/didactic exercises based on selected European monolingual, multilingual and / or parallel corpora (DeReKo, CorAp, InterCorp, Wortschatz Universität Leipzig, DWDS etc.).

The academic-didactic and social-human focal points of GerCoLiNet include:

  1. The acquisition of specialist knowledge and skills for the participants’ own research (for the MA thesis or dissertation) on contemporary language use in German and in linguistic comparison (German-Czech; German-Danish; German-French, German-Italian and German-Polish);
  2. The European networking of students and doctoral candidates from five of the six universities of the 4EU+ Alliance in accordance with the guiding principles of Flagship 2 (Europeanness, Data Literacy, Multilingualism);
  3. Support/development of research-based education: student participation in their own education via a variety of formats (including research discussion groups, self-assessment activities, collaborative learning, etc. – see below);
  4. The academic cooperation with respect to the internationalisation of curricula aimed at by the 4EU+ Alliance. This continuing cooperation will be reflected in the long-term foundation of a joint Master of Arts seminar in the field of German and Contrastive linguistics as of the winter semester 2022/23. In the long term, academic cooperation between the participating parties should also lead to joint doctoral programmes (with “co-tutelage”).

A total of 6 colleagues from the 5 partner universities are participating in the cooperation project as lecturers in all planned phases. The GerCoLiNet participants in the specific 4EU+ project (June 2021-June 2022) are students from the five European partner universities who are registered at the respective institutions at MA or PhD level and are specialising in German Linguistics and/or Contrastive Linguistics. As non-native German speakers, or having a contrastive interest, they are already advanced in the field of linguistics  that permits them to participate efficiently and productively in German in the European network: The students participating in the overall project and actively contributing to all 4 phases (Copenhagen: 3; Milan: 6; Paris: 6; Prague: 5; Warsaw: 4) are working on their Master’s thesis or PhD in the field of corpus linguistics or (contrastive) lexicology/lexicography, which is supervised by the collaborating partners of the project.