Paula Fikkert
Educational research and advice

Paula Fikkert is full professor First Language Acquisition and Phonology at Radboud University.

Paula Fikkert is research director of the Centre for Language Studies, board member of the National Research School for Linguistics, member of the Humanities board of NWO, and a member of the ‘Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen’.

She studied Dutch Language and Culture in Groningen. In 1994 she defended her dissertation ‘On the acquisition of prosodic structure’ at Leiden University (cum laude). She continued to do research on language acquisition and language change at the University of Konstanz, Germany, before returning to the Netherlands as a research fellow at the Royal Dutch Academy of Science.

Subsequently, she received an innovation grant from the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO), and is now leading the Language Acquisition Group at Radboud University, which studies early language perception and production, focussing on sound structure and word learning. A lot of research is carried out at the Baby Research Centre.