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Motivation

Linguistic diversity is one of the fundamental rights of the European Union and we are optimistic that cross-lingual AI models can play an important role in facilitating it. Cross-lingual models based on neural networks are trained on terabytes of data and have recently reached large performance gains. As the computationally expensive training of such models can only be afforded by large companies, the evaluation of cross-lingual models is driven by commercial incentives and focuses on the average quantitative performance across more than a hundred languages. The intricacies of application scenarios for low-resource languages or economically insignificant purposes are largely being overlooked and individual differences between users are underestimated. When we want to use cross-lingual models for human-centered scenarios such as cognitive modeling, language education, or use cases in the digital humanities, we quickly encounter their limitations.

In this workshop, we want to bring together leading scholars from linguistics, cognitive science, and computer science to develop a more diverse and human-centered perspective on cross-lingual models. We want to integrate typological theories about differences between language families, cognitive models of multilingual processing, and computational approaches toward increasing diversity in language technology.

Important Details & Registration

Start: 🕒 Monday, March 16th, 2026, 1.30pm
End: 🕒 Tuesday, March 17th, 2026, 3.30pm
Where: 📍 Historische Sternwarte in Göttingen (Google Maps)

Participation in the workshop is free of charge but the number of participants is limited.
Please register using the form at the bottom of this page.


Keynote Speakers

We proudly announce our two expert speakers for 2026:

Profile picture of Tessa Verhoef Tessa Verhoef (Leiden University)
Topic: Emergent Linguistic Structure in Agent Communication
Tessa Verhoef will present her agent simulation framework and discuss structural convergence and lexical semantic change in cross-lingual communication.
Profile picture of Terra Blevins Terra Blevins (Northeastern University (Khoury College, Boston)
Topic: Breaking the Curse of Multilinguality
Terra Blevins studies unsupervised cross-lingual transfer and presents multilingual modeling approaches that better represent low-resource languages.

Program Highlights

Our interdisciplinary gathering has become known for a focused and social atmosphere. Our program includes:


Impressions from HumanCLAIM 2025


Organization Committee

Profile picture of Lisa Beinborn Profile picture of Urja Khurana Profile picture of Zhuojing Huang Profile picture of Luise Pohlmann
Lisa Beinborn
(University of Goettingen)
Urja Khurana
(Delft University of Technology)
Zhoujing Huang
(University of Goettingen)
Luise Pohlmann
(University of Goettingen)

Contact

If you have questions about the program, you can reach the organizers via humanclaim-organizers@googlegroups.com.

If you are interested in humanclaim and want to stay informed about the event, send a request to join our google group at https://groups.google.com/g/humanclaim/.

Curious about previous editions? Visit the websites for HumanCLAIM 2025 and HumanCLAIM 2024.


Funding

The workshop is funded by zukunft.niedersachsen, the joint science funding program of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture and the Volkswagen Foundation.

Registration