REGINA ZIELEKE
As a linguist, I work towards understanding language in its complexity involving form, meaning, and context. I fell in love with this research field, its nerdy discussions, its scholars, and its variety of questions no one else would ask during my graduate studies. I enjoy being a part of this by asking those questions myself and passing on to students the knowledge already gained.
ABOUT ME
My research interests are at the semantics-pragmatics interface concerning in particular discourse coherence, information structure, contrast in discourse, and contrastive discourse connectives.
​
Of course, I love exploring new linguistic questions and topics, but also new food, people, and places. For me, a perfect end of a working day involves a good book or movie accompanied with a good wine and dear people.
ACADEMIC CAREER AND EDUCATION
Most recent positions
October 2019 - ongoing
RESEARCHER AND LECTURER, UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN
Research on contrastive discourse connectives and discourse structure, cooperation with the team around Claudia Maienborn at the Institute of German Language and Literatures, and teaching two semester periods per week.
November 2015 - June 2019
PHD,
UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE
PhD in German Philology (Linguistics) at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne: Contrast in discourse. Empirical evidence from six German contrastive discourse connectives. Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Klaus von Heusinger and Prof. apl. Dr. Carla Umbach. Grade: Magna cum laude (1,0).
April 2017 - September 2019
RESEARCHER AND LECTURER, UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE
Research on contrastive discourse connectives (PhD), cooperation with the team around Klaus von Heusinger at the Department for German language and linguistics, and teaching two semester periods per week.
September 2016 - June 2017
LECTURER, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Lecturer for German language at Pembroke College with 8 supervisions per week (undergraduate students), visiting student for semantics and pragmatics.
RESEARCH

TEACHING
My goal is to teach students a general understanding of the German language and linguistics. It has been my experience that this works best when the students feel valued and supported and when they can contribute by comparing and transferring knowledge.