Prof. Dr. Barbara Job

Principal Investigator for projects A06, B04 and Ö of the Collaborative Research Centres 1646 Linguistic Creativity in Communication (2024-2027)

The LADY study (Linguistic Analysis of Diagnostic Interviews in Young Patients) explores the linguistic aspects of diagnostic interviews with young patients in the context of epileptic and functional seizures. This study is crucial in understanding how conversational behavior can be used as a tool for diagnosing and understanding the seizure experiences of young patients.

Blinded study to test the criteria for the differential diagnosis of epileptic and dissociative seizures in children and adolescents using linguistic analysis
Over the last 5 years, the working group has developed very good and applicable criteria for deducing the cause of seizures (psychiatric or epileptic) from how children and adolescents describe their seizures. Now, a study is being conducted to prove that conversational linguists who apply these criteria can reliably and correctly assess the patient's illness even if they have no information about the patient other than a recording of the conversation.

Researchers involved:
Dr Joachim Opp (Head Physician and Director of the SPZ Oberhausen)
Prof Dr Barbara Job
Dr Heike Knerich
Dr Birte Schaller
Student assistants: Yvonne Filies, Mia Schürmann, Kira Dubatuvka
Project sponsor: German Society for Epileptology (DGfE)
Duration: 2020 to 2021

CIAS Collaborative Project The Americas as an Intertwined Space, Long Essay Series, Barbara Frank-Job: Migration as a Process: Concepts of Temporality in Blogs of Latin American Migrants to Quebec (BMBF Regional Studies), Duration: 2017-2019
Blogs by migrants to Quebec document migration as a narrative (re)construction of personal experience and experiential processes. Various concepts of temporality play an essential role in this process. Using the example of an extensive corpus of weblogs by Hispanophone and Francophone migrants to Quebec, my long essay examines concepts of temporality in migration and their significance for the blogging actors.
Migrants, those willing to migrate and those interested in migration come together in the virtual communication space of the Web
2.0 to form communication communities on the topic of migration. Weblogs by Latin American and Canadian migrants in particular form an extensive, complex network of migration diaries with comments and a lively interactive exchange of information on the topic of migration (Frank-Job & Kluge 2015; Kluge 2015). In their descriptions and narratives, the bloggers linguistically retrace the entire migration process, from the decision to emigrate, the gradual passage through various preparatory steps to immigration itself, which in turn is presented as a long process of individual stages of integration that only reaches its narrative degree with the attainment of Canadian citizenship. The linguistically depicted migration process is interactively accompanied by more or less regular participants who comment on it. In the process, a long-term, continuous negotiation process unfolds in which various concepts of temporality are interactively negotiated, mutually confirmed and changed again, constructing migration as a succession of stages in a comprehensive process that is both the motor and basis of identitary processes of change and appropriation. Against the background of the results of current clinical conversation analysis, psychological narrative research and narrative medicine, these constructive processes present themselves as an effective therapeutic method for the actors to process and overcome problematic biographical experiences on the path of migration.
On the empirical basis of a corpus of more than 3000 pages of Hispanophone and Francophone blogs on the topic of migration to Quebec, the essay presents essential aspects of these concepts of temporality and reflects on them in an interdisciplinary research context of conversation analysis, psychology and medicine.

Interdisciplinary research project "Lingustic analysis of pain descriptions in children and adolescents" ("LASS study")
in cooperation with the Social Paediatric Centre /
Paediatric Neurology Centre of the Evangelical Hospital Oberhausen
Researchers involved:
Dr Joachim Opp (Chief Physician and Head of the SPC Oberhausen)
Prof Dr Barbara Job
Dr Heike Knerich
Dr Birte Schaller
Student assistants: Justine Kohl, Yvonne Filies, Mia Schürmann
Project sponsor: Wagener Foundation - Foundation for Social Pedagogy
Duration: 2015 to 2017

Interdisciplinary research projects "Linguistic differential typology of epileptic and non-epileptic seizures in adolescent patients"
in cooperation with the Social Paediatric Centre /
Paediatric Neurology of the Evangelical Hospital Oberhausen
Researchers involved:
Dr Joachim Opp (Chief Physician and Head of the SPC Oberhausen)
Prof Dr Barbara Job
Dr Heike Knerich
Dr Birte Schaller
Student assistants: Barbara Stücker, Franziska Weinberg
Project sponsor: German Society for Social Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (DGSPJ)
Duration: July 2014 to September 2016

Collaborative project: "Computational Historical Semantics"
Researchers involved:
Prof. Dr Bernhard Jussen, History, University of Frankfurt (Coordinator)
Prof Dr Barbara Job, Linguistics / Romance Studies, Bielefeld University (in charge of Romance sub-projects)
Prof Dr Sarah Desi-Schmid Linguistics / Romance Studies, University of Tübingen
Prof Dr Alexander Mehler, Computer Science, University of Frankfurt
Prof Dr Maria Selig, University of Regensburg
Project sponsor: Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Project organiser:
Research programme: eHumanities
Bewilligungszeitraum 1.4.2013-31.8.2016
Amount of funding: 685,200 euros
CompHistSem-Obligation/Possession sub-project: Project leader Prof. Dr Barbara Job
Approved funding amount for the Job sub-project: 122,000 euros

Collaborative project: "The Americas as a space of entanglement: transnational flows, geopolitical imaginaries, social production of the environment"
Coordination: Prof. Dr Willy Raussert, Prof. Dr Angelika Epple (Bielefeld University Center for Interamerican Studies, University and University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld
Project sponsor: Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Project sponsor: German Aerospace Research Centre Jülich,
Laufzeit: 01.02.2013-31.01.2017
Research programme: Regional Studies / Area Studies
Scope of funding: 3.3 million euros
Priority topic I: "Transnational Flows", project line "Virtual Communication Spaces of Migration and Diaspora": Project leader Prof. Dr Barbara Job / Prof. Dr Anne Schröder: "Virtual Communication Spaces of Migration and Diaspora ". Funding approved for the Job / Schröder sub-project: 120,000 euros

Completed projects:
1st joint project "Linguistic Networks", Prof. Dr Alexander Mehler (Coordinator, Institute for Humanities Informatics, Goethe University Frankfurt), Prof. Dr Barbara Job (Linguistics, Bielefeld University), Prof. Dr Philippe Blanchard (Mathematical Physics, Bielefeld University), Dr Hans-Jürgen Eikmeyer (Linguistics, Bielefeld University),
Project title: "Linguistic networks: text-technological representation, computational linguistic synthesis and physical modelling"
Project sponsor: Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Project sponsor: Research centre Jülich,
Research programme: New scientific methods and technologies in the humanities
Funding reference: 01UA0810
Bewilligungszeitraum 1.1.2009-31.12.2012
Amount of funding: 685,200 euros
Sub-project A1: Project leader Prof. Dr Barbara Job
Project staff: Olga Pustylnikov, Veronika Ries (research assistants), Bianca Henrichfreise, Claudia Sieber (research assistants)

2nd ZiF working group: "Interdependence and dynamics of linguistic and social networks"
Project sponsors: ZiF, Bielefeld, Federal Ministry of Education and Research, joint project Language Networks, sub-project A1 (Barbara Job)
Venue: ZiF, Bielefeld
Event date: 27-30 April 2010
Organisers: Bielefeld Interdisciplinary Media Studies Centre, Prof. Dr. Barbara Job (Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Studies), Prof. Dr. Alexander Mehler (Faculty of Technology), Prof. Dr. Tilmann Sutter (Faculty of Sociology)
Topic: The workshop centred on the investigation of the relationship between social and linguistic networks and their dynamics, which has not yet been systematically researched in network research. This was described with a view to future empirical applications in quantitative analyses of complex multi-level networks and on the basis of qualitative studies. The workshop participants used forms of communication on the World Wide Web, especially Web 2.0 (blogs, instant messengers, wikis, etc.), whose special form of media-mediated interactivity has led to the differentiation of diverse communicative networks, as a common field for analysing the typology and evolution of social and linguistic networks in their mutual influence. This data is comprehensively documented at all levels of structuring and archived at all stages of development, making it accessible for qualitative and quantitative analysis (see www.linguistic-networks.net).
The workshop was attended by representatives of mathematical network theory and its text-technological applications, sociologists and linguists.

3rd ZiF working group: "Colonialism and the Culture of Writing Language and Cultural Contact in Colonial Discourse Traditions"
Project sponsor: ZiF, Bielefeld, DFG symposium
Organisers: Junior Professor Dr. Sebastian Thies (Romance Literary and Cultural Studies, Bielefeld), Prof. Dr. Rosa Yáñez Rosales (Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Departamente de Estudios del Hombre, Universidad de Guadalajara), Prof. Dr. Barbara Job (Linguistics of Romance Languages, Bielefeld)
International symposia as part of the Bielefeld InterAmerican Studies, 20-22 June 2007
Venue: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld

4 Dec. 2006 DFG symposium: "The emergence of pragmatic markers : innovation, routinisation and pragmaticalisation of approximators and related markers"
Organiser: Dr. Wiltrud Mihatsch / Prof. Dr. Barbara Job
Venue: Bielefeld University

5th Collaborative Research Centres 321 Transitions and areas of tension between orality and writing, project B12: "European genre systems in comparison". (March 1992-April 1996) University of Freiburg, sub-project: The development and differentiation of French text types in the Middle Ages. Scope of funding: own habilitation position, BAT IIa for 4 years