To achieve our overarching aim, we implemented a flat and transparent organizational structure enabling innovative research by lean, goal-directed management.
Advisory Board
The Advisory Board represents our stakeholders. It monitors the organizational aspects of our research and educational programmes in biannual meetings with the programme director.
Scientific Advisory Board
The Scientific Advisory Board, consisting of (inter)national researchers who are excellent representatives of our field, monitors the quality of our research and educational programme. It receives annual reports and meets with a representative group of LiI researchers every second year. On this basis it advises the Scientific Board of our consortium on the design and implementation of the research programme and on the achievement of its scientific aims.
Scientific Board
The Scientific Board (SB), consisting of the programme director and representatives from the Work Packages and Big Questions, is responsible for the overall programme. The SB meets every two months, taking all the major decisions regarding scientific, educational, financial and communication issues. The SB safeguards the internal progress and quality of our work by monitoring, reviewing, assessing and ultimately approving all proposals for activities coming from the work packages, the Educational Team and the Management Team.
Educational Team
We exploited the already existing excellent graduate programmes in our field by forming of an Educational Team consisting of the representatives of the graduate schools with central contributions to the PhD training programme.
Management Team
The Management Team is responsible for assuring efficient planning, control and organization of all scientific, educational and financial structures and meetings, as well as for organizing all dissemination and PR activities.
Big Questions
To step up its consortium-wide collaborations, the Language in Interaction consortium has reorganized itself into five Big Questions at the mid-way point of the consortium. Teams of researchers collaborate to collectively address the key questions of our field that only a consortium of this nature can tackle. The BQs are considered as central to our understanding of the human language faculty, and questions where the LiI-members believe the consortium can make significant steps forward in answering them.
Tenure Tracks
The consortium facilitated the creation of three Tenure tracks to offer a special opportunity for the very best young, creative and talented researchers from outside the research consortium to establish an independent research group financed by start-up funding for four years providing resources for the candidate itself, a PhD candidate, materials and consumables.
Synergy Project
In 2018, LiI issued an open external Synergy Call to further trigger and reward innovative, interdisciplinary, and more than “business as usual” research. After careful judgement of all submitted proposals by the Assessment Committee based on the preset criteria, one proposal was granted and the project “Communication in Context” submitted by Dr. Arjen Stolk and Dr. Jana Basnakova. The project started in the fall of 2019. You can find more information on the Synergy Project here and on the dedicated website https://www.mutualunderstanding.nl/.
Societal Impact work package
The Societal Impact work package provides the infrastructure for knowledge utilization, so that research outcomes can be translated into applications for society in domains such as education, health, and new media.
First phase: Work Packages
In the first phase of the grant, the research consortium was organized into seven focused, but coherent Work Packages (WPs) with clear and open procedures to promote collaborative, innovative, interdisciplinary research at the cutting edge of the field. Five scientific WPs defined the content of the research programme. These WPs were based on a decomposition of the human language faculty into its key components, the remaining two WPs provide the interface between research, methods and utilization. The WPs were restructured into the Big Questions at the mid-way point of the consortium.