Mirjam Ernestus (born 1969)[1] is professor of psycholinguistics and scientific director of the Centre for Language Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands.[2]
Ernestus studied at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam from 1987 to 2000, initially for a year in French linguistics and literature, then for a year in chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences, before graduating cum laude with a BA/MA in general linguistics in 1994. Her PhD was awarded in 2000.[3]
Subsequently, Ernestus worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen from 2000 to 2006 and at the Radboud University from 2003. In 2007 she was appointed associate professor of psycholinguistics, and in 2012 she was promoted to full professor.[2] Since 2017 she has also been the scientific director of the university's Centre for Language Studies. In addition, she acted as editor of the journal Laboratory Phonology from 2015 to 2021, and since 2021 has been chair of the editorial board of Radboud University Press.[2]
Ernestus has been the recipient of significant honours and awards, including membership of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (since 2015) and the Academia Europaea (since 2022).[1] [2] In 2011 she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant with the title The challenge of reduced pronunciation variants in conversational speech for foreign language listeners: experimental research and computational modeling.[3] [4]
Ernestus's work is in the fields of laboratory phonology, psycholinguistics and phonetics, with the production and perception of informal, spontaneous conversational speech – including in second language acquisition – forming the main focus of her research.[1] [2] She has also worked with Harald Baayen on the processing of complex morphology.[2] [5]