Dr. Aoju Chen

Biography

Aoju Chen is a professor at Utrecht University specializing in English Linguistics with a focus on Language Development. Her research addresses fundamental questions in English linguistics, particularly relating to prosody and its role in communication and language acquisition. Her work investigates how prosodic features are acquired from birth into adulthood, and how these features interact with the linguistic abilities that learners develop in varying social contexts. She leads an NWO-funded VICI project entitled 'A Sound Start: Prosodic Development from Birth to the Early Years of Life' (2021-2026), where her team explores how children learn native prosody and the specific prosodic phrasing related to form-meaning mappings during critical developmental periods. Chen employs an interdisciplinary, cross-linguistic approach to examine both biologically motivated and input-based learning mechanisms in language development. Additionally, as the principal investigator for the research hub associated with the university's strategic theme of Dynamics Youth, she investigates child-parent interactions and their impact on children's emotional and cognitive development, particularly in relation to their sense of belonging. Previously, she completed the NWO-funded VIDI project 'Get Focus Right: A Cross-Linguistic Study on Prosodic Encoding of Focus in Children' (2011-2016), which explored how children develop adult-like competence in using prosody to convey structure in various languages.

Research Interests

Experience