Welcome

Rebekah Wegener is a senior researcher in linguistics and semiotics at the Institute for English and American Studies at Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Austria, and co-founder of learning technology startup Audaxi in Sydney, Australia.

Her research interests include context modelling, theoretical and applied linguistics as well as intelligent learning and teaching technologies. She is currently working on models of context for text understanding and multimodal environments as well as behavioural interfaces for artificial intelligence.

She previously worked as a linguist for Appen speech and language technology doing text analysis for context sensitive software development and at the Health Information Technology Research Laboratory at the University of Sydney, working on text understanding in medical reports. Rebekah has been involved in organising a wide range of conferences and workshops, such as the MRC workshop series, the International Systemic-Functional Congress and the International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context.

Selected Publications

• Rebekah Wegener. A person-centric view of multimodal language in context. In: Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Individual. Ed. by Jamie Williams. Milton Park, UK: Routledge Publishing, in press.
• Rebekah Wegener and Lise Fontaine. A functional approach to context. In: Cambridge Handbook of Language and Context. Ed. by Jesus Romero-Trillo. Cambridge University Press, 2023.
• Arianna Maiorani and Rebekah Wegener. Challenging instantiation in modelling movement-based multimodal communication. In: Empirical evidences and theoretical assumptions in functional linguistics. Ed. by Elissa Asp and Michelle Aldridge. Routledge, 2022.
• Rebekah Wegener and Jörg Cassens. Blending SFL and Activity Theory to Model Communication and Artefact Use – Examples from Human-Computer Interaction. In: Analyzing the Media: a Systemic Functional Approach. Ed. by Martin Kaltenbacher and Hartmut Stöckl. Equinox, 2019.
• Rebekah Wegener and Timo Lothmann. That is Not Normal Rabbit Behaviour: on the trail of the grammar of fictional worlds. In: On Verbal Art: essays in honour of Ruqaiya Hasan. Ed. by Rebekah Wegener, Stella Neumann and Antje Osterle. Equinox, 2018.
• Rebekah Wegener. Studying language in society and society through language: context and multimodal communication. In Wendy Bowcher (ed). Language in Society and Society in Language. Palgrave: UK, 2016
• Rebekah Wegener, Christian Kohlschein, Sabina Jeschke and Björn Schuller. Automatic Detection of Textual Triggers of Reader Emotion in Short Stories. In J. F. Sánchez-Rada and B. Schuller (ed). LREC 2016 Workshop -- Emotion and Sentiment Analysis. 2016.
• Rebekah Wegener and Jörg Cassens. Multi-modal Markers for Meaning: using behavioural, acoustic and textual cues for automatic, context dependent summarization of lectures. In J. Cassens, R. Wegener and A. Kofod-Petersen, editors, Proceedings of MRC 2016, The Hague, The Netherlands, 2016.
• David Butt, Rebekah Wegener, and Jörg Cassens. Modelling behaviour semantically. In P. Brézillon, P. Blackburn and R. Dapoigny, editors, Proceedings of CONTEXT 2013, pages 343--349, Annecy, France, 2013. Springer.
• Anders Kofod Petersen and Rebekah Wegener. `It’s like a poke on facebook': emergent semantics in location aware social network services. In R. Tawaio (ed.) Handbook of Research on Discourse Behaviour and Digital Communication. 2010.
• Anders Kofod-Petersen, Rebekah Wegener, and Jörg Cassens. Closed doors -- modelling intention in behavioural interfaces. In Anders Kofod-Petersen, Helge Langseth, and Odd~Erik Gundersen, editors, Proceedings of the Norwegian Artificial Intelligence Society Symposium (NAIS 2009), Trondheim, Norway. Tapir Akademiske Forlag, 2009.
• Rebekah Wegener, Jörg Cassens, and David Butt. Start making sense: Systemic functional linguistics and ambient intelligence. Revue d'Intelligence Artificielle, special issue on Modelling and Reasoning on Context, 22(5):629--645, October 2008.

A more complete list of publications can be found here on this website or on my university profile.

Qualification

• Doctor of Philosophy
  • Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
  • Thesis titled: Parameters of context: from theory to model and application – the Medical Emergency Team in context
• Honours Degree class 1 Linguistics
  • Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
  • Thesis titled: Constructing education in the media: grammar, meaning and ideology – the commodification of education
• BA Linguistics
  • Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
• BA Psychology and Cognitive Science
  • Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
  • Awards: Outstanding Academic Achievement – Psy 334 Social Development, Research & Policy.
• Higher School Certificate
  • Sydney Adventist College, Sydney, Australia
  • Awards: Gold Medal – Humanities, Duke of Edinburgh Award - Silver, School Captain

Scholarships and Awards

• 2011 – MUCF – Macquarie University Completion Fund
• 2008 – MUTG – Macquarie University Travel Grant
• 2004 – MUTG – Macquarie University Travel Grant
• 2004 – MUPGR – Macquarie University Postgraduate Research Scholarship