Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft Leibniz-Gemeinschaft

Sarah Wesolek successfully defends her dissertation

14.07.2026

We congratulate Sarah Wesolek on successfully defending her dissertation in General Linguistics at Humboldt University in Berlin. In her dissertation, “Non-native speech in linguistic processing and social perception,” she examines how listeners’ expectations shape the perception of non-native speech and its speakers, with a particular focus on predictive processing and implicit attitudes.

Sarah Wesolek was a doctoral researcher in the two projects  funded by the German-Polish Science Foundation: ATTIT (Conscious and unconscious attitudes toward a foreign accent in the Polish-German context) and GRANITUS (Grammatical tinnitus and its role in the perception of foreign language accent. A comparison of German and Polish). Both projects were conducted within Research Area 1: Laboratory Phonology at the Leibniz-Centre General Linguistics (ZAS). PD Dr Marzena Zygis was a PI of these projects at ZAS and a supervisor of Sarah's dissertation.

We warmly congratulate Sarah Wesolek on this achievement and wish her every success in her future academic career.