doc. Mirjam Friedová, Ph.D.

She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of California at Berkeley (1995), the title of Docent of Linguistics from University of Helsinki (2008), and in 2020, she was named an Adjunct Professor of Charles University. In the years 2014-2017, she served as Dean at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, where she teaches at the Linguistics Dept. and where she also served as Chair in 2011–2013 and 2018-2019. She is currently the PI of a European structural project in excellent research, Creativity and adaptability as conditions for the success of Europe in an interrelated world (2018-2022). Between 1996 and 2008, she taught linguistics at UC Berkeley, University of Oregon, and Princeton University. From 2008 till 2011, she held the position of Senior Researcher in the Czech Language Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Her research focuses on the cognitive and functional grounding of linguistic structure, particularly in syntax and morphosyntax. She’s been one of the leading proponents of the constructional approach in language analysis, developing the representational potential of Construction Grammar into new areas, especially as concerns the integration of conventionalized interactional features in generalizations about speakers’ linguistic knowledge. She has been engaged in pioneering work aimed at capturing the fluid nature of grammatical organization, especially in the domain of variability and change, largely in connection with grammaticalization theory and its emphasis on the contextual grounding of grammatical development.

In addition to serving as one of the Associated Editors for Cognitive Linguistics (2012-2017), she is the co-founder of the book series Constructional Approaches to Language at John Benjamins (2000) and was one of its co-editors till 2012. She’s the co-founder (in 2008) of the journal Constructions and Frames and in 2012-2020 was also its Co-Editor-in-Chief. In 2012-2020, she served as a member of ERC evaluation panels.