36.3191, All: Obituary: Irene Mittelberg (1967-2025)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3191. Tue Oct 21 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3191, All: Obituary: Irene Mittelberg (1967-2025)

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Date: 21-Oct-2025
From: Stella Neumann [stella.neumann at ifaar.rwth-aachen.de]
Subject: Obituary: Irene Mittelberg (1967-2025)


The Department of English Studies at RWTH Aachen University, Germany,
mourns the loss of Prof. Dr. Irene Mittelberg, who passed away on 11
October after a long illness, which she endured with admirable
serenity, hope and determination. We are very sad to lose a versatile
and innovative scholar, a dedicated academic teacher, a colleague, and
a friend.
Irene Mittelberg’s academic education and employment history
demonstrates the breadth of her interests and the ease with which she
moved between international cultural contexts. She studied Romance
Linguistics and Economics at Albert-Ludwigs Universität Freiburg,
French Language and Literature at the Université de Paris IV, La
Sorbonne, and French Linguistics, Art History, and Economics at the
University of Hamburg, where she received an MA in 1996. She went on
to study Linguistics at Cornell University, Ithaca (NY), where she
received another MA in 2000, and a PhD in Linguistics and Cognitive
studies for a dissertation on Metaphor and Metonymy in Language and
Gesture: Discourse Evidence for Multimodal Models of Grammar in 2006.
She was a visiting scholar at the Department of Linguistics of the
University of California, Berkeley in 2001, and held academic
positions as Lecturer in Academic and Creative Writing at Weill
Cornell Medical College (Doha, Katar), as Assistant Professor in
Cognitive and Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Social and
Cultural Sciences of the Europa-Universität Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder),
and as Assistant Professor of English Linguistics at the Department of
Language and Communication of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
In 2009, Irene joined RWTH Aachen University as Assistant Professor of
Linguistics and Cognitive Semiotics at the Human Technology Centre
(HumTec) of RWTH Aachen University, where she was head of the
interdisciplinary HumTec research projects “Natural Media and
Engineering” and “NeuroPeirce”, funded by the German Excellence
Initiative, and founder and head of the Cognitive Semiotics Lab, one
of the first research labs using innovative motion-capture technology
for investigating co-speech gestures. In 2016, she was appointed
professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Semiotics at the Department of
English Studies at RWTH and was involved in the management of the
Centre for Sign Language and Gesture (SignGes), whose long-term
director she was.
Through her research, Irene has given fresh impetus to the fields of
semiotics, gesture research and empirical aesthetics, informing her
reasoning in Cognitive Linguistic theorising. She combined classical
semiotic theories with contemporary embodied approaches to language,
cognition, and multimodal interaction. Here, her focus was on the
examination of the role of image schemas, iconicity, indexicality,
metonymy, metaphor, viewpoint, and frames in the gestures that
accompany verbal communication. Another field of interest were
processes of sign formation and the use of space in gesture,
architectural design, and the visual arts. Her love for art played a
role not only in her research but also in innovative teaching projects
that took groups of students to the museum where they studied the
gestures used by people talking about paintings. Her publications
include a monograph on Metaphor and Metonymy in Language and Gesture
(2006), the co-edited volume Methods in Cognitive Linguistics (2007),
a special issue on gesture for Sprache und Literatur (2010), and well
over 50 journal articles or book chapters. Recent interdisciplinary
work includes pattern analysis in kinetic gesture data and the
adoption of Peirce’s universal categories for neuroscientific research
into gesture; a collaborative project on Peirce’s works just started
recently. As a scholar, she never tired of critically evaluating
theoretical and empirical scholarly work, drawing on the full wealth
of her theoretical understanding. As a university teacher and
supervisor of student projects, theses and dissertations, she managed
to instil the excitement of innovative research in generations of
students. She was able to spot talent in students and provided advice
and encouragement for future researchers. Her enthusiasm for exploring
new ways of research was infectious and has influenced the development
of many young scholars.
Those who were lucky enough to get to know Irene beyond her
contributions to academic research and teaching will remember her as a
highly cultured person and a connoisseur of the arts, as a fabulous
and most generous host, and as a witty and humorous conversation
partner. We will dearly miss her. The Department of English Studies
will honour her memory.

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics




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