Three faculty members from SLCL have received Birmingham-Illinois Partnership for Discovery, Engagement, and Education (BRIDGE) Seed Fund Grants for the 2025-26 academic year.
Professors Zsuzsanna Fagyal (French), Jonathan Dunn (linguistics), and Salvatore Callesano (Spanish) received a $6500 grant for their project, "Computational Sociolinguistics and the Impacts of Language Models," together with their partner team at the University of Birmingham. The team will begin with workshops at both universities in Spring 2026 and 2027 and then collaborate on joint projects and publications.
The University of Birmingham and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign formed BRIDGE in 2014. Since then, it's brought together more than 115 faculty members from both institutions to collaborate across various disciplines. The BRIDGE Seed Fund supports collaborative projects between the University of Birmingham and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with a focus on developing faculty networks, building cognate research areas, expanding educational exchange opportunities, and strengthening strategic aspirations for institutional engagement.