Dr. Anastassia Shaitarova
I am a computational linguist with an MA and a PhD from the Department of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich (UZH). Currently, I divide my time between two postdoctoral positions, both driven by a shared goal: advancing the principles of Open Research Data (ORD) and FAIR data management.
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ForATR
I am happy to use my computational skills to help researchers in the humanities access and process historical sources. ForATR (ATR stands for Automatic Text recognition) is an innovative pilot project hosted at the Digital History Lab, UZH, addressing the growing need for such technologies, data management, and secure archiving in source-based research. -
DICED
In parallel, I am part of the team of Prof. Dr. Christian Ydesen, the chair of History of Education and Education Policy Analysis, where we are building a comprehensive database of documentation issued by large intergovernmental organizations like the UN or UNESCO. Surprisingly enough, these documents are largely scattered and barely usable for research. This ambitious project aims to collect all of them, preprocess, store, analyze, and provide a user-friendly interface which will open new possibilities in education research.
I always wanted to be an explorer, and my PhD project led me into a new, barely-defined research direction that is now rapidly gaining traction: How does Generative AI affect the way we express ourselves linguistically? With no established research paradigm, I explored across multiple linguistics-adjacent disciplines to measure the impact of generative AI on natural language. My thesis, Generated Text as a Locus of Language Contact: Exploring the Impact of Generative AI on English and German, integrates insights and methods from corpus linguistics, psycholinguistics, communication studies, and translation studies.
Before pivoting my career toward technology and research, I worked in the San Francisco Bay Area as a healthcare interpreter in hospitals and clinics, and as a consultant and interpreter for American families adopting from Russia and Ukraine. I am multilingual and multicultural, with a diverse set of skills and interests, which I strive to put into practice in service of my community.