PostDoc
Annika Schiefner is a postdoctoral researcher with a background in the psycholinguistics of sign languages and gestures. She is currently working on the DFG-funded ViCom project Visual Feedback in Dyadic Interaction: Cross-Linguistic, Cognitive and Social Dynamics at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cologne. She obtained her PhD from the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Cologne in 2025, where she explored how iconicity shapes concrete and abstract signs and gestures. From 2024 to 2026, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Signbeach project at the University of Amsterdam, where she developed learning games for Dutch Sign Language primary school children and explored the dynamics of sign language learning on a digital platform. Her research combines experimental methods with real-world language data and combines academic knowledge creation with concrete societal impact.
Copyright: Phil Dera. Edited using AI.
About
University of Cologne
a.schiefner@uni-koeln.de
Project
Selected Publications
Schiefner, A., Otterspeer, G., Sümer, B., & Roelofsen, F. (2026). The SignBeach Dataset of Dutch Sign Language (NGT) signs. In E. Efthimiou, S.-E. Fotinea, T. Hanke, J. A. Hochgesang, J. Mesch, & M. Schulder (Eds), Proceedings of the LREC2026 12th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Language in Motion (pp. 450–458). European Language Resources Association (ELRA). https://www.sign-lang.uni-hamburg.de/lrec/pub/26019.html
Schiefner, A., Roelofsen, F., & Sümer, B. (2026). Iconicity and transparency in Dutch Sign Language. Behavior Research Methods, 58(87). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-026-02969-3
Ortega, G., Schiefner, A., Lazarus, N., & Perniss, P. (2025). A lexical database of British Sign Language (BSL) and German Sign Language (DGS): Iconicity ratings, iconic strategies, and concreteness norms. Behavior Research Methods, 57(139). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-025-02660-z
Pouw, W., & Schiefner, A. (2025). Masking the mouth region for visual degradation of articulation and mouthing [1.0.0]. https://github.com/WimPouw/AutoVisualDegradArticulationMouthing
Schiefner, A. (2025). Patterns of iconicity across sign languages and gestures [PhD thesis, University of Cologne]. https://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/78615/
Trettenbrein, P. C., Bümmerstede, J., Finkbeiner, T. A., Gehlbach, P., Meister, N.-K., Schiefner, A., Schumacher, P. B., Spruijt, D., Steinbach, M., & Perniss, P. (2025). Towards a ‘DGS-LEX’: A roadmap for the collaborative creation of a psycholinguistic database for German Sign Language (DGS). Linguistische Berichte, 281, 91–100. https://doi.org/10.46771/9783967699456_5
Ortega, G., Schiefner, A., & Özyürek, A. (2019). Hearing non-signers use their gestures to predict iconic form-meaning mappings at first exposure to signs. Cognition, 191, 103996. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2019.06.008