Julia Schilling, M.Ed.
Research Assistant
PhD Student
I am a Research Assistant (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) and PhD Candidate at the Institute of English, American and Celtic Studies at the University of Bonn, working under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Robert Fuchs.
My research lies at the intersection of corpus linguistics, computational linguistics, and political discourse analysis. In my doctoral research, I investigate how the core dimensions of populism—people-centrism, anti-elitism, and popular sovereignty—are expressed in large-scale political communication on social media. Combining manual discourse annotation, transformer-based language models, and corpus-linguistic methods, I analyze more than one million social media posts produced by U.S. politicians. I further examine whether populist discourse exhibits distinctive stylistic characteristics using a multidimensional approach inspired by Biber’s Multi-Dimensional Analysis (MDA). Applying Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to a large set of lexico-grammatical features, I explore how linguistic style relates to populist content across speakers and over time.
Beyond my dissertation, I work on projects involving corpus infrastructure, AI-assisted language analysis, and digital methods for linguistic research and teaching. I am particularly interested in making advanced corpus-linguistic and computational methods more accessible to students and researchers through innovative digital tools.
For office hours, please register on eCampus.
Curriculum Vitae
Since April 2024: Research assistant/ doctoral researcher with Prof. Dr. Robert Fuchs, University of Bonn
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Since December 2025: Research assistant (Programmer / Technical Development) vnd Project "The English Course Companion (EnC²): An Integrated, LLM-Supported Platform for English Language Practice"
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Since November 2025: Research assistant (Technical Development & Research Integration) vnd Project "CORDIAL (CORpus-based Dialogue-driven AI for Learning)"
August 2021–July 2024: Research assistant/ doctoral researcher with Prof. Dr. Robert Fuchs, University of Hamburg
- April 2023 – March 2024: Research assistant Digital Data Literacy in Teaching Lab (DDLitLab) “Applying Data Science to Controverial Discourses”
- April 2022 – March 2023: Research assistant Digital Data Literacy in Teaching Lab (DDLitLab) “(Advanced) Data Analysis for Linguists”
- August 2021 – July 2023: Research assistant DFG Project “The Impact of Public Discourse on Health Care Utilization during the COVID-19 Pandemic”
April 2021 – September 2021: Lecturer for English Linguistics at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz (Seminar: Syntax)
Feb 2019 – December 2021: Student Assistant (stud./wiss. Hilfskraft) at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz
- Creating and processing of a Twitter corpus of American senators and Donald J. Trump for Prof. Dr. Britta Mondorf and Dr. Ulrike Schneider.
- Curating Instagram and Facebook corpora for Dr. Miriam Lind.
- Academic writing tutor in English linguistics
April 2018 - March 2021: Master of Education in English and Social Studies, with a supplementary examination in Mathematics, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz
June 2019 – August 2019: VT, USA Master of Arts in English (fully funded semester abroad), Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English, Middlebury,
April 2015 – Mai 2018: Bachelor of Education in English and Social Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz
WiSe 25/26: Methods in Applied Linguistics - Seminar
SoSe 25: Issues in language and communication "Political Discourse Analysis" - Seminar
SoSe 25: English Linguistics LA "Teaching English as a Second Language in the 21st Century" - Seminar
WiSe 24/25: Methods in Applied Linguistics - Seminar
Presentations
Schilling, J. (2026). From annotation to automation. Mapping populist style through multidimensional analysis. International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME 47), Koblenz, Germany.
Schilling, J. (2025). Trump 2.0: The evolution of populist rhetoric from Twitter to Truth Social. International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME 46), Vilnius, Lithuania.
Schilling, J., Fuchs, R. (2025). Project 2025 Unveiled. Keyness Analysis and LIWC Insights into Political Language. International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME 46), Vilnius, Lithuania.
Schilling, J. (2025). Trump 2.0: The evolution of populist rhetoric from Twitter to Truth Social. Bonn Applied English Linguistics Conference (BAELc 14), Bonn, Germany.
Schilling, J. (2025). Populism in the digital era. Analyzing Trump's discourse. Nachwuchstagung für Englische Linguistik (NEL-5), Gießen, Germany.
Schilling, J. (2024). Vox Populi: A Linguistic Framework of Populist Discourse. International Society for the Linguistics of English Summer School (ISLE 2024), Freiburg, Germany.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2023). Sentiments in British COVID-19 Twitter Discourse. International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME 44), Vanderbijlpark, South Africa/online.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2023). Media portrayals of COVID-19 in British newspapers: A comparative sentiment analysis. E-Symposium on Computation Politics, Thessaloniki, Greece/online.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2022). Spreading like a virus – Discussing COVID-19 in German and English. Sociolinguistics Symposium 2022, Ghent, Belgium.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2022). Pandem-onium: Identifying keywords and phrases in British COVID-19 Twitter and newspaper discourse. International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME 2022), Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Schilling, J. (2022). Trump’s Populist Rhetoric – A Corpus-Based Analysis of ‘the People’ and ‘the Elite’. International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME 43), Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2022). Discursive strategies and polarisation in British COVID-19 Twitter discourse. Conference of the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), Mainz, Germany.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2022). Viral discourses: COVID-19 discourse in German and English newspapers. British Association of Applied Linguistics. Belfast, United Kingdom.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2022). A tale of four nations: British COVID-19 Twitter discourse across time and space. British Association of Applied Linguistics. Belfast, United Kingdom.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs. (2022). Media portrayals of COVID-19 in British newspapers: A comparative analysis. 9th Biennial International Conference on the Linguistics of Contemporary English. Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2022). Identifying keywords in British COVID-19 Newspaper Discourse. Methods in Dialectology XVII, Mainz, Germany.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs R. (2022). Metaphors in British COVID-19 Newspaper Discourse. X International Symposium on Intercultural, Cognitive and Social Pragmatics (EPICS X), Seville, Spain.
Schilling, J., Bayindir E. E., Schreyögg, J. & Fuchs, R. (2022). The Impact of Public Discourse on Health Care Utilisation during the COVID-19 Pandemic. DFG Research Conference Pandemics, online.
Schilling, J. & Fuchs, R. (2022). Identifying Keywords in German COVID-19 Twitter Discourse. Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft, online.
Publications
Schilling, J., & Fuchs, R. (in press). Viral metaphors: A comparative analysis of COVID-19 discourse on Twitter and in British newspaper. Metaphor & Symbol. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2026.2654418