Dr. Petya Osenova is professor in Contemporary Bulgarian Grammar (morphology, syntax and corpus linguistics) in the Faculty of Slavic Studies at Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski” and senior researcher in the area of Language Technologies in the Department of AI and Language Technologies at the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Her scientific interests are in the fields of formal and computational linguistics, language resources, machine translation.
She was a key person in a number of EU projects, related to eLearning, Machine Translation, Language resources. She is the responsible person for the language resources in CLaDA-BG – the CLARIN and DARIAH joint framework in Bulgaria. Petya Osenova is the head as well as the Bulgarian representative at the User Involvement Committee in CLARIN-ERIC.
Petya Osenova specialized in computational linguistics as a postdoctoral fellow in the Tuebingen University, Germany (2003) and in Groningen University, the Netherlands (2004); as a Fulbrighter at Stanford University, the USA (2010). In 2018 Petya Osenova received the award of Clarivate Analytics for excellence in science research in South-Eastern Europe.
petya@bultreebank.org
Mădălina Chitez is a Senior Researcher (Assoc. Prof.) in applied corpus linguistics at the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, West University of Timișoara, Romania. She holds a PhD from the Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg, Germany, and has held research positions at Oxford, Siena, and Zurich. She is the president of CODHUS (Centre for Corpus-Related Digital Approaches to Humanities), conducting research at the intersection of corpus linguistics, NLP, and educational studies.
madalina.chitez@e-uvt.ro
Christian Rapp is a researcher and educator based at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), where he leads the Educational Technology team at the Centre for Innovative Teaching and Learning. His work is located at the intersection of academic writing, digital technologies, and higher education — exploring how tools and platforms can support students in thinking, writing, and learning more effectively. He holds a PhD in Political Science from Bergische Universität Wuppertal and an MA from the University of Essex. Over the past decade, he has led and contributed to a range of internationally funded research projects, including several EU and Swiss National Science Foundation initiatives, with a combined funding volume of approximately 1.9 million Swiss Francs. Christian has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, and regularly delivers keynotes at international conferences. He was board member of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW) and co-editor of the 2023 Springer volume Digital Writing Technologies in Higher Education: Theory, Research, and Practice.
christian.rapp@zhaw.ch
Members
Bulgarian team
Nikolay Paev is a PhD student and assistant researcher at the Department of AI and Language Technologies at the Institute for Information and Communication Technologies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. He specializes in developing, training, and utilizing language models for Bulgarian. His research interests focus on efficient small language models and bridging the gap between language models and knowledge-based systems for practical interdisciplinary applications.
nikolay.paev@iict.bas.bg
Teodor Valchev is a Software Developer at the Department of AI and Language Technologies at the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.
His interests span a wide range of fields, with a primary focus on Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Statistics and Probability, as well as Hardware and Electronics.
teodorvulchev@gmail.com
Romanian team
Ana Cristina Băniceru is a senior lecturer at the West University of Timișoara, where she teaches British & American Literature and Academic Writing. She has been involved in the international SCOPES project Literacy Development in the Humanities: Creating Competence Centers for the Enhancement of Reading and Writing as Part of University Teaching. Her publications include “Romanian Academic Writing Practices: Perceptions about ‘Good Writing’ and ‘Writing Competences’: A Questionnaire Study,” (with Dumitru Tucan) “Telling Academic Stories: A Different Method of Approaching Academic Writing,” “Transnational Opportunities and Challenges within the European Union’s Erasmus+ Student Exchange Program,” (with Claudia Doroholschi) and “What Is a Writing Teacher, and How Do We Make One? Writing Teacher Training in Romania” (with Claudia Doroholschi).
cristina.baniceru@e-uvt.ro
Adrian Cîntar is a senior lecturer at the West University of Timișoara. He has been involved in computer applications applied to archaeology, history, oral history, language and audio description for the blind research. His interdisciplinary approach interest also covers web design and cybernetic security.
adrian.cintar@e-uvt.ro
Anabella Costache is a PhD student in applied corpus linguistics and comparative literature at the West University of Timisoara in Romania and the University of Pau and Pays de l’Adour in France (in cotutelle). Her research aims to analyse, in the framework of Ecocriticism and Ecolinguistics, how ecological awareness and nature are represented in contemporary children’s and young adult literature from Romania, France, and the United Kingdom. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, digital humanities, discourse analysis, ecocritical children’s and YA literature, and cultural studies.
anabellacostache@gmail.com
Karla Csuros is a PhD student in applied linguistics in the Doctoral School of Humanities (Philology) at the West University of Timisoara, Romania. She was a Fulbright Visiting Student Researcher (2024-2025) at the University of Oregon, in Eugene, OR, United States. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, media studies, foreign language teaching, academic writing and literature.
karla.csuros@e-uvt.ro
Andreea Dincǎ is a research assistant at the West University of Timișoara, Romania, where she has just defended her PhD in applied corpus linguistics. She has gained expertise both nationally and internationally by contributing to two major research projects in applied corpus linguistics, ROGER (Corpus of Romanian Academic Genres) and EXPRES (Corpus of Expert Writing in Romanian and English), and by serving as a Fulbright visiting student researcher at Iowa State University, USA. Her PhD research focuses on phraseology in Romanian learner English academic writing, examining differences between novice and expert writers, with particular attention to phraseological pattern use among novice writers. More recently, she has expanded her research to include how emerging technologies, including AI, can support academic writing instruction.
andreea.dinca@e-uvt.ro
Claudia Ioana Doroholschi is a senior lecturer at the West University of Timișoara. She has been involved in research regarding writing practices and the teaching of writing in Romania. She is a co-editor of University Writing in Central and Eastern Europe: Tradition, Transition, and Innovation (Springer, 2018). Her most recent publications include ‘The material you’re working with is yourself’: Student Learning Experiences with Thesis Writing’ (with Kristin Solli, in Montserrat Castello, Bojana Petric (eds.), The Thesis Writing Journeys of Bachelor’s and Master’s Students: A Transnational European Perspective, Multilingual Matters, 2024) and ‘(Re)drawing the line: Deficit and empowerment in articles on writing research from Central and Eastern Europe,’ (with Loredana Bercuci, in Soler, Josep, and Kathrin Kaufhold, eds., Language and the Knowledge Economy, Routledge, 2025).
claudia.doroholschi@e-uvt.ro
Loredana Pungă is professor of linguistics and translation studies in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Faculty of Letters, History, Philosophy and Theology of the West University of Timișoara, Romania. With more than 25 years of expertise in these fields, she has published over 60 articles, books and book chapters both in her country and abroad, she has given presentations in international conferences and has been manager or team member of research projects. Professor Pungă has been a PhD coordinator in the field of Philology since 2016.
loredana.punga@e-uvt.ro
Roxana Rogobete is a senior lecturer at the Department of Romanian and Classical Studies, Faculty of Letters, History, Philosophy and Theology at the West University of Timișoara, where she teaches Literary Theory, New Approaches in Literary Studies, Romanian Literature, and Research Ethics. Her research interests encompass digital humanities, focusing on the CODHUS centre (Centre for Corpus Related Digital Approaches to Humanities), emergent practices in literary studies, migration and intercultural literature (within the Interdisciplinary Centre of Regional Studies/ CISR), discourse analysis, academic writing, and corpus linguistics.
roxana.rogobete@e-uvt.ro
Cosmin Striletchi – Associate Professor at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology. The technical skills cover: Software programming technologies on various platforms (C/C++, Java, PHP, Android, etc.), Database engines (MySQL, SQL, Oracle, Access, etc.), Web servers (Apache, Tomcat, IIS, etc.), Security technologies, Technologies involved in implementing distributed applications, design development and implementation of digital educational solutions, multimedia applications, neural networks / AI. The management competencies include software projects management, programming teams coordination, tasks management and resources allocation. Member of 10+ research projects, main author / co-author of 20+ specialized books, main author / co-author of 30+ scientific papers (ISI WOS, IEEE, Scopus, other IDB)
cosmin.striletchi@com.utcluj.ro
Dumitru Tucan is a Professor in the Department of Romanian and Classical Studies at the West University of Timișoara, specializing in Literary Theory and Cultural Studies. His research examines the culture and artifacts of 20th-century totalitarian regimes, with a particular focus on the cultural memory of the Holocaust and the Gulag in Eastern Europe. In parallel, he has a sustained interest in the teaching and research of academic writing and research methodologies in literary studies. His recent works include Recuperarea istoriei traumatice și jocurile memoriei. Despre memoria Holocaustului din România (2020), Memorialistica carcerală a comunismului românesc și dilemele sale etice (2025), The Diary as Survival: Dehumanization, Death, and Suffering in the Holocaust Diaries of Children and Teenagers (2021), and Calea spre genocid. Antisemitismul european. Antisemitismul românesc (2024; co-authored).
dumitru.tucan@e-uvt.ro
Swiss team
Otto Kruse is a retired professor of applied linguistics at Zurich University of Applied Sciences’ School of Applied Linguistics in Switzerland. A pioneer in the development of modern writing pedagogy in Europe, he is also a co-founder of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW). He has published extensively on practical issues in the teaching and learning of writing, as well as on research-based writing and thinking studies. His current research focuses on the connection between writing, critical thinking, and epistemic development with respect to AI.
Dejana Milićević is a PhD student at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and a research assistant at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), where her work focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence and academic writing. Her research examines how AI tools reshape language, how authorship is redefined in AI-assisted writing contexts, and how writers prompt AI systems in academic settings. She is particularly interested in the epistemic and linguistic implications of human-AI collaboration in scholarly writing.
Jakob Ott is a senior software architect and requirements engineer at Zurich University of Applied Sciences’ Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. His technical and domain related experience enabled various platforms for research and education like Thesis Writer, myCompetence, AI driven RAG systems. His current work is focused on tailored state-of-the-art platforms that integrate learning experience with AI features for education and research.
Nina Schnatz is a researcher and lecturer at ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften, at the Institute of Language Competence (ILC). She teaches academic and technical writing across different levels and degree programs, with a focus on integrating generative AI into writing pedagogy. Her research examines how AI reshapes learning, authorship, and epistemic agency in education. She developed and teaches the course Scientific Writing with AI, which serves as a research environment for her doctoral research at Goethe University Frankfurt on epistemic agency in AI mediated learning using a design based research approach. Her work has been presented at international conferences and has resulted in peer reviewed and forthcoming publications. In addition, she conceived and developed a funded open educational resource for upper secondary education that supports students in writing with AI and promotes reflective and responsible use of generative tools.