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Welcome

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Universität zu Köln, Center for Digital Humanities. Half of the time, I work for the SFB1252: Prominence in Language as a Service Project member focusing on research data and methods. The other half, I work for the Key Profile Area: Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition, where I focus on a research project on using LLMs for word frequency estimations. Generally, my research focuses on linguistic distance, transfer learning, and computational modeling in language learning and processing.

Since I received my PhD in 2015 from Radboud University Nijmegen, I have contributed to projects at institutions including TU Dortmund, Freie Universität Berlin, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin.

📍 Current Position

Postdoctoral Researcher

  • Universität zu Köln, Center for Digital Humanities

Research areas:

  • SFB1252: Prominence in Language (Research Data & Methods)
  • Key Profile Area: Skills and Structures in Language and Cognition
  • Large Language Models for Word Frequency Estimation

🎯 Research Interests

  • Linguistic similarity and its impact on adult language learning
  • Computational approaches to language processing
  • Educational research and data science in linguistics
  • Large Language Models in psycholinguistics
  • Transfer learning and cross-linguistic influence
  • Research data management and open science

📚 Publications

Key Publications (2024–2016)

Schepens, J., Woloszyn, H., Marx, N., & Gagl, B. (2024). Can Large Language Models generate useful linguistic corpora? A case study of the word frequency effect in young German readers. Open Mind, 9: 1597–1656. doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.30

Schepens, J., van Hout, R., & Jaeger, T. F. (2020). Big data suggest strong constraints of linguistic similarity on adult language learning. Cognition, 194: 104056. doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104056

Schepens, J., Van der Slik, F., & Van Hout, R. (2016). L1 and L2 distance effects in L3 Dutch learnability. *Language Learning, 66(1): 224–256. doi.org/10.1111/lang.12150

Complete Publication List

For a complete and most up-to-date list of all my publications, please visit my Google Scholar profile.

📄 Curriculum Vitae

📄 Download CV as PDF

� Recent Presentations

  • Code Review Strategies in AI-Assisted Programming. Presented at the University of Cologne Competence Days "AI in Higher Education" html or pdf

�📞 Contact

Last updated: November 2025