Hi! Merhaba! 

I am a researcher in psycholinguistics, fascinated by the intricate cognitive mechanisms that underpin language learning and processing. My research focuses particularly on bilingual cognition, exploring how the mind navigates the complexities of multiple languages. Through a combination of psycholinguistic experiments and corpus analyses, my research aims to address four key questions: 

(a) How do monolingual and bilingual speakers process and mentally represent words and phrases? 

(b) What role does frequency play in language learning and processing? 

(c) How do individual differences influence language learning and bilingual cognition? 

(d) How do learning mechanisms adapt to the rich diversity of statistical properties of typologically diverse languages?

I currently deliver workshops for the Introduction to Data Science course for first-year undergraduates and the Linear Regression Models course for postgraduates in the School of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. These sessions, conducted with mid- to large-sized groups, provide students with immersive, hands-on experiences in data science and statistical modelling. Through exploring, visualizing, and analyzing data, students gain critical skills to interpret complex datasets, uncover meaningful patterns, and develop robust models to predict real-world outcomes with confidence, all within a collaborative, in-person setting.

My name is pronounced ”Doh+oosh Jaan Oek+sooz”, and my pronouns are he/him.

 

Current Research Projects 

I am involved in two exciting projects in Lancaster University's Linguistics and English Language department. 

Funded through Lancaster's FASS Research Fund, this collaborative project with colleagues from the Arctic University of Norway uses reaction-time visual world eye-movement and production paradigms to investigate Turkish heritage speakers' comprehension and production of evidentiality. We also investigate how an interplay of social and cognitive individual differences such as language exposure and executive functioning influence these processes. 

Funded by Lancaster University’s Camões Institute, this collaborative project with colleagues from Lancaster University and the University of Lisbon conducts experiments and learner corpus analyses, to investigate how Portuguese learners' learn, process and mentally represent multiword expressions. 

Feel free to explore my research, publications, and ongoing projects. If you're interested in collaborations or have questions, do reach out!