Dr. Lena Blott

Lena Blott has been working at the Department of English since 2023. Together with Prof.  Dr.  Altvater, she is working on the development of a children's language laboratory in Mannheim. Her research interests include the linguistic and cognitive prerequisites that enable children and adults to understand complex language. She is particularly interested in how we learn to deduce the meaning of words from the linguistic context, what individual differences contribute to this ability, and how linguists can use gamification to conduct research online, apart from the lab. She conducts research using neuroscientific and behavioral methods such as reaction time measurement, eye tracking, magnetic resonance imaging, and electroencephalography.

After studying English with a focus on psycholinguistics at the University of Mannheim, Lena Blott moved to the United Kingdom, where she completed a MSc in Neuroscience, Language and Communication at University College London. She received her PhD in Language and Cognition from University College London in 2020 on “Down the garden-path and back again: Factors contributing to successful recovery from ambiguity-related misinterpretations”. As part of her doctorate, she spent a research stay at the University of California, Davis (USA). During her studies, Lena Blott was also active in university teaching, and is a certified Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK. After completing her PhD, she was a research associate in the Department of Experimental Psychology at University College London, and returned to Germany in 2023 for a position in the Department of English at the University of Mannheim.

Lena Blott teaches the “Quantitative Research” and “Phonetics and Phonology” courses.