• Applied linguistics 

• Bi- and multilingualism 

• Language acquisition and learning across the lifespan 

• Language-cognition interface 

• Cognitive psychometrics 

• Theory of Mind 

Lukas is a research and teaching assistant at the Chair of Psycholinguistics and Second Language Acquisition (Prof. Dr. Simone E. Pfenninger). He holds a BA and an MA degree from the University of Zurich in both English and Spanish Language and Literature. He is also a qualified upper secondary school instructor of English and Spanish. Lukas wrote his MA dissertation on the levelling of past be in British, American, Canadian, and lingua franca English using a corpus-based approach. He has lived in Scotland and Chile, where he completed part of his BA degree. 

Lukas is currently working on his PhD project (cumulative) on second language learning across retirement, focusing on the interplay of cognitive and linguistic factors as well as on Theory of Mind. His thesis is part of the VARIAGE project, led and supervised by Prof. Dr. Simone E. Pfenninger. He has also been teaching the compulsory BA module “Introduction to English Linguistics” since the Fall Semester 2022. 

• “Retirement as a Predictor of Change in Cognitive Functioning and L2 Learning: Evidence from a Longitudinal Micro-Development Study” (EuroSLA 32, Birmingham, August 2023: Doctoral Workshop, https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/lacab/events/eurosla-32) 

• “Exploring Retirement as a Threshold: Retirement as a Predictor of Change in Cognitive Functioning, Theory of Mind, Discourse Production, and L2 Learning” (PLL 5, Madrid, May 2024: main conference, https://www.fundacion.uned.es/actividad/idactividad/34319) 

• “Multilingualism, Cognition, and EFL Learning Across Retirement: A Longitudinal Study” (IAM13, Groningen, August 2024: main conference, with S. E. Pfenninger and A. Rossmanith, https://sites.google.com/rug.nl/iaml3conference2024/home) 

I am happy to supervise BA theses on topics related to multilingualism, second language acquisition, and English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learning.