As part of the UniGR-Guest Professorship, Dr. Alistair Plum from the University of Luxembourg spent a two-month research stay at the University of Trier.
This stay laid the foundation for a long-term collaboration in the fields of cultural AI, multilingual natural language processing (NLP), and digital humanities.
Dr. Plum used his time in Trier to engage in close exchanges with colleagues, establish new research collaborations, and explore the interfaces between cultural knowledge, language identity, and computational methods.
"Daily interactions, research meetings, and informal conversations helped me situate my own work within the context of existing initiatives at the host institution. The stay confirmed the value of cross-border scientific exchange and contributed to strengthening my interdisciplinary research profile. It also sharpened my understanding of how cultural knowledge, linguistic identity, and computational methods can be studied together in a way that takes into account the sociolinguistic and cultural specificities of the Greater Region“ – Dr. Alistair Plum
A highlight of the stay was the organisation of the workshop on « Artificial Cultural Reasoning », which focused on the question of how AI can account for cultural differences. The workshop brought together researchers from the fields of AI, linguistics, and the humanities and provided an initial forum for interdisciplinary exchange in the Greater Region.
"[The workshop] provided methodological impulses for work on cultural knowledge in AI and demonstrated considerable interest in developing shared frameworks for evaluating cultural reasoning“ – Dr. Alistair Plum
In addition to the workshop, the research stay produced other concrete results, including the CLUG project in collaboration with the GovTech Lab Luxembourg and plans for publications. It also opened up new teaching opportunities in Trier, where Dr. Plum supervises research projects that combine computational methods with cultural analysis. Thus, the UniGR-Guest Professorship contributes both to research and to sustainable cross-border cooperation and interdisciplinary education.
"The Guest Professorship achieved more than originally planned. It enabled new research collaborations, strengthened interdisciplinary approaches to cultural AI, and laid the foundation for sustainable collaboration in the Greater Region.“ – Dr. Alistair Plum
The UniGR-Guest Professorship is supported by the Marienburg Foundation, under the patronage of the Fondation de Luxembourg.
A new call for applications for research stays as part of the UniGR-Guest Professorship is currently open – find more information here and apply by 15 February 2026.