Our team
Vera Ferreira
E-Mail: vferreira@cidles.eu
After taking the licentiate degree in English and German Studies at the University of Coimbra (Portugal, 1999) and getting an M.A. degree in General Linguistics and Linguistic Typology at the Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich (Germany, 2000), Vera started her PhD in General Linguistics at the University of Munich and specialized in Language Documentation and endangered languages in Europe. Her main research interests lie in European endangered languages and in the connection between documentary data and language revitalisation.
From 2008 to 2012, she was responsible for the documentation of Minderico within the DoBeS project financed by the Volkswagen Foundation at the University of Regensburg.
In 2010 Ferreira became the chair of CIDLeS and head of its Language Documentation and Language Typology group, being involved in several projects focusing on the documentation and study of minority/endangered languages in Europe, with a special focus on lexicographic issues, as well as in training in these areas of expertise. Between 2011 and 2015 she was the PI of a dictionary project that created the first bilingual multimedia dictionary of Minderico. The project was funded by the European Fund for Regional Development - PRODER. She was one of the Portuguese delegates of the COST Action “New Speakers in a Multilingual Europe” (IS1306). In 2014 she was invited to be a member of the advisory board of the project TypeCraft (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), giving consultancy on language documentation and data management issues and since 2015 she is one of the members of the advisory board of the European project “The Digital Languages Diversity Project”. As CIDLeS researcher, Vera Ferreira was also the PI of the ERASMUS+ project “LangUp: Preservation of minority cultures and languages. An entrepeneurial opportunity to embrace the past and the future” (2017-2019).
Between 2016 and 2018, Vera Ferreira worked as Digital Archivist at SOAS University of London and was responsible for the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR). Since 2018, she is working as ELDP (Endangered Languages Documentation Programme) Depositing Officer first at SOAS and since July 2021 at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, in Berlin / Germany. Apart from the management of the archive and several research and IT projects, she gives training on all aspect of language documentation and provides support and guidance in each phase of data management and language data processing.
Peter Bouda
E-mail: pbouda@murena.io
Website: www.peterbouda.eu
Peter Bouda is an expert for Natural Language Processing and Language Technologies. He currently focusses on localization of projects and helps teams to onboard their project to web-based translation tools like Weblate. Peter studied linguistics and believes that anyone should be able to communicate online and use software in their native language. He co-founded the Interdisciplinary Centre for Social and Language Documentation in Portugal and organized several workshops “Coding for Language Communities” to connect Free, LIbre and Open Source Software communities with language communities.