Collaborative Research Initiatives

Experimental Research in Linguistics Initiative (ERLI)

The Experimental Research in Linguistics Initiative is led by Dr. Timothy Gupton. Its mission is to promote, develop, and explore experimental research methods for applications in a broad range of linguistic subfields such as language acquisition (L1, 2L1, Ln), phonetics, phonology, pragmatics, psycholinguistics, semantics, sociolinguistics, and syntax. It also aims to foster inter-disciplinary academic and intellectual collaboration among faculty and students pursuing studies in language and linguistics. ERLI is not currently grant-funded, meaning we do not currently have funds for research or lab assistants. We currently have the following collaborations in progress:

1. “The Overt Pronoun Constraint in Dominican Spanish” (Gupton, T. with Carlos Gelormini-Lezama, U. de San Pedro, Argentina)

2. “Information Structure and Mood Selection in New Mexico Border Spanish” (Gupton, T. with Kathryn Bove, New Mexico State U.)

3. “Acceptability and processing of control phenomena in Brazilian Portuguese: Evidence against the Movement Theory of Control” (Gupton, T. with Doug Merchant, San Diego State U./UCLA and Marcello Modesto, U. de São Paulo, Brazil)

Recovering Black Performance in Early Modern Iberia (1500–1800)

Elizabeth Wright, Distinguished Research Professor of Spanish literature in the Department of Romance Languages and Associate Academic Director of the Willson Center, is a principal investigator of a grant project that has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Wright and co-P.I. Nicholas Jones, Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Yale University, were awarded an NEH Collaborative Research Grant of $96,347 to produce an international conference and a special journal issue on Recovering Black Performance in Early Modern Iberia (1500–1800).

Centro Interuniversitario Franco Fortini

Italian Professor Thomas Peterson has an ongoing research collaboration with the “Centro Interuniversitario Franco Fortini” at the University of Siena, Italy. The Center houses the archives of Franco Fortini, a prominent Italian poet and intellectual who taught at the University of Siena until his death in 1994.  The International Cooperative Agreement between UGA's Department of Romance Languages and the Universities of Siena, Padua, Paris (III), and the Istituto Orientale of Naples was initiated in 2006. 

Fernão Lopes Translation Project

Dr. Amélia Hutchinson, emerita, and the late Professor Teresa Amado, University of Lisbon, co-directed an international team of academics in the US and in Portugal to produce the first complete English translation of the extant works of chronicler Fernão Lopes (1380?-1459) spanning a period from 1357 to 1411. The unique and invaluable Lopes chronicles, published in 2023, are accompanied by an extensive bibliography and detailed index. This translation will open many new avenues for research in different fields, including Medieval History, Military Studies, Women Studies, Economy in the Middle Ages, Medicine, and more. This project received generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Portuguese Direção Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bibliotecas and the Luso-American Foundation for Development (FLAD).