Our team
Scholars and engineers from the Fryske Akademy and Campus Fryslân, joining forces on language technology for Frisian.
Nanna Haug Hilton
Senior Researcher and Programme Coordinator
Nanna Hilton is a senior researcher and programme coordinator for Linguistics at the Fryske Akademy. Her research covers sociolinguistics, language attitudes and phonetics, citizen science, language planning and policies with a focus on the Frisian speech community.
Matt Coler
Associate Professor
Matt Coler is an associate professor at Campus Fryslân (University of Groningen) and director of the MSc in Speech Technology. He works on speech technology and linguistics, especially for small and indigenous languages.
Eduard Drenth
Software Architect
Eduard Drenth is a software architect at the Fryske Akademy, where he is co-responsible for ICT policy . He is also involved in the Fryske Akademy’s language databases (Frysker) and the online Dutch-Frisian dictionary as a developer.
Phat Do
Assistant Professor
Phat Do is an assistant professor at Campus Fryslân (University of Groningen). He works on speech technology for low-resource languages, including the synthetic Frisian voice used in FLARESlab projects.
Wilbert Heeringa
Researcher
Wilbert Heeringa is a researcher at the Fryske Akademy, working on dialectometry, phonetics and statistics. He uses computational methods to measure dialect variation and change in vocabulary, morphology and pronunciation, and develops tools for phonetic research such as Visible Sounds.
Martijn Kingma
Researcher
Martijn Kingma is a postdoctoral researcher at the Fryske Akademy. His PhD research focused on studies variation and change in the Frisian vowel system, combining sociolinguistic and phonetic methods.
Zhu Li
PhD Candidate
Zhu Li is a PhD candidate at Campus Fryslân (University of Groningen). Zhu Li’s research focuses on expressive text-to-speech in low-resource scenarios. Currently, Zhu Li works on the exploring of sarcastic speech synthesis.
Yue/Annie Luo
PhD Candidate
Yue Luo is a PhD candidate at Campus Fryslân (University of Groningen). She investigates Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for atypical speech, such as whispered and dysarthric speech patterns, using signal processing and deep learning to improve recognition performance, enhance robustness, and support the development of more inclusive speech technologies.
Igor Marchenko
PhD Candidate
Igor Marchenko is a PhD researcher at Campus Fryslân (University of Groningen). His research looks at phonetic variation in Frisian across the province of Fryslân, using digital tools to map and analyse the diversity of Frisian dialects, preserve it, and share knowledge about the complexity of Frisian.
Shekhar Nayak
Assistant Professor
Shekhar Nayak is an assistant professor in speech technology at Campus Fryslân (University of Groningen). His research covers speech recognition, speech synthesis, affective computing and deep learning.
Vass Verkhodanova
Assistant Professor
Vass Verkhodanova is an assistant professor at Campus Fryslân (University of Groningen). She works on phonetics and phonology, speech prosody, and speech perception and production. Her PhD research focused on recognising recognizing speech of people with Parkinson’s disease.
Dylan Rose
PhD Candidate
Dylan Rose is a PhD Candidate at the Fryske Akademy and Campus Fryslân, where he studies the cognitive and sociolinguistic mechanisms underlying Frisian–Dutch bilingual speech. His research focuses on how speaker identity shapes language switching, perceptual authenticity, and interactional behaviour, with direct implications for the design of inclusive and minority-language–sensitive AI systems.
Joshua Schäuble
Assistant Professor
Joshua Schäuble is an assistant professor of Data Science at Campus Fryslân (University of Groningen).
Hindrik Sijens
Researcher
Hindrik Sijens is a researcher at the Fryske Akademy, specialising in lexicography, neologisms, databases and spelling in Frisian. He has worked on the Frisian dictionaries since 1985, including the Frysk Hânwurdboek, the Online Dutch–Frisian Dictionary and Frysker.
Janneke Spoelstra
Researcher
Janneke Spoelstra is a researcher at the Fryske Akademy, working on lexicography and literature. Since 2018, she has been an editor for the Online Dutch-Frisian Dictionary and now contributes to the maintenance of Frysker.nl.
Hans Van de Velde
Researcher
Hans Van de Velde is a researcher in sociolinguistics at the Fryske Akademy. He studies language variation and change, multilingualism and phonetics, including the pronunciation of Frisian and Dutch in Fryslân, the evaluation of variations, and the development of experimental sociolinguistics.
Johan van der Zwaag
Researcher
Johan van der Zwaag is a researcher at the Fryske Akademy, specialising in lexicography, Frisian orthography, and language variation in Frisian. He maintains and develops Frysker, and contributes to the Online Dutch-Frisian Dictionary (ONFW).
