Muses and Measures: Empirical Research Methods for the Humanities

Jèmeljan Hakemulder’s (1966) did his MA in literary theory and comparative literature. For his PhD he specialized in the psychology of literature, focusing on the effects of reading literary texts on attitudes. He now trains students in the Humanities in methodological aspects of research, especially experimentation.

Sonia Zyngier is Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the Postgraduate Programme of Applied Linguistics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she has acted as Director of Cultural Affairs and Continuing Education for five years. She was Secretary of PALA (Poetics and Linguistics Association) and is co-editor of the IGEL Newsletter. She has an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Liverpool and a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham. Much of her work has been on stylistics and the teaching of literature to EFL students. Specific research interests include discourse analysis and pedagogical stylistics. She has published widely on literary awareness, stylistics, and corpus analysis of literary discourse. She has developed a programme of research in the area of the Empirical Science of Literature and its implications for literary education. Her latest publication is Literature and Stylistics for Language Learners, co-edited with Greg Watson and published by Palgrave-Macmillan.

The three researchers have set up the REDES Project, an international and multicultural programme aiming at training young researchers (www.redes.de/portal and www.letras.ufrj.br/redes