Gideon Kotzé, PhD

Researcher III, Centre for the Digital Research of Religion

correspondence Address:
Arna Nováka 1/1, 602 00 Brno

office: bldg. L/206
Veveří 468/26
602 00 Brno

phone:	+420 549 49 5763
e‑mail:

social and academic networks:

Curriculum vitae

Personal information

Office

Current position

Academic qualifications

2013: PhD in Computational Linguistics; University of Groningen; thesis: "Complementary Approaches to Tree Alignment: Combining Statistical and Rule-Based Methods"
2007: Master of Arts in Linguistics (Lexicology and Terminology); Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; thesis: "Building a WordNet for Afrikaans: Preliminary research in the form of an inquiry into the feasibility and optimal methodology for the development of a wordnet database"
2005: Baccalaureus Artium Honores in Applied Language Studies (Translation Studies) (cum laude); Nelson Mandela University
2003: Baccalaureus Artium in Applied Language Studies (cum laude); Nelson Mandela University

Professional experience

2022 - : Research fellow at DISSINET project, Masaryk University
2020 - 2023: Research fellow at Department of South African Sign Language and Deaf Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa
2020 - 2022: Mobile application developer at Department of South African Sign Language and Deaf Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa
2021 - 2022: Web application developer at Department of Geography, University of South Africa
2020: Developer: automated quality assurance of African WordNet project, University of South Africa
2016 - 2019: Senior researcher in computational linguistics at the Academy of African Languages and Science, University of South Africa
2014 - 2016: Postdoctoral fellow in computational linguistics at the Academy of African Languages and Science, University of South Africa
2008 - 2012: Doctoral candidate at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands
2008: Developer: Extension of Afrikaans WordNet project, North-West University, South Africa
2006 - 2007: Data developer and researcher, North-West University, South Africa
2006: Intern, Vrije University Amsterdam

Teaching activities

2015: Supervision of two students at the level of Baccalaureus Artium Honores for the module "Honours Research Report", at the University of South Africa
2009: Undergraduate course "Tekstmanipulatie" (text manipulation) co-presented at University of Groningen (2009)

Research activities

2014-2019: Sustainable Multilingualism in the South African Context: statistical machine translation, parallel corpora, bitext alignment, digitization pipelines, corpus design and construction, TEI-XML
2008-2013: PaCo-MT (Parse and Corpus Based Machine Translation) and PhD thesis: sentence, word and syntactic tree alignment (bitext alignment), single and parallel treebanks
2006-2007: Afrikaans WordNet: semi-automated wordnet conversion, manual translation of synsets (lexicography), wordnet design

Other academic activities, research projects, grants

2021-2023: Research fellowship, Department of South African Sign Language and Deaf Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa
2016-2019: Senior researcher, Academy of African Languages and Science, University of South Africa
2014-2016: Postdoctoral Fellow, Academy of African Languages and Science, University of South Africa

Most significant professional accomplishments

2022-2026: Research fellowship at ERC funded DISSINET project, Centre for the Digital Research of Religion, Masaryk University, Czechia
2021-2023: Research fellowship, Department of South African Sign Language and Deaf Studies, University of the Free State, South Africa
2016-2019: Senior researcher, Academy of African Languages and Science, University of South Africa
2014-2016: Postdoctoral Fellow, Academy of African Languages and Science, University of South Africa
2008-2013: PhD, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
2006-2007: Main developer and project leader of Afrikaans WordNet project, North-West University, South Africa

Major publications

KOTZÉ, Gideon, Vincent VANDEGHINSTE, Scott MARTENS a Jörg TIEDEMANN. Large aligned treebanks for syntax-based machine translation. LANGUAGE RESOURCES AND EVALUATION. NETHERLANDS: SPRINGER, 2017, Vol. 51(2), s. 249-282. ISSN 1574-020X. Dostupné z: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10579-016-9369-0. info
KOTZÉ, Gideon. Complementary Approaches to Tree Alignment: Combining Statistical and Rule-Based Methods. Online. Groningen, The Netherlands: University of Groningen, 2013, 221 s. ISBN 978-90-367-6177-2. info

2022/10/31