Dr. Aleka Akoyunoglou Blackwell
Professor

Departments / Programs
Degree Information
- PHD, Boston University (1998)
- AM, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1991)
- BS, Northwestern University (1989)
Biography
Aleka Akoyunoglou Blackwell joined the MTSU English department in 2001. She is the founder of the Annual MTSU Linguistics Olympiad (www.mtsu.edu/lo). She is currently a co-chair of the North American Computational Linguistics competition (www.nacloweb.org) and also serves as a coach for the US team at the International Linguistics Olympiad (https://ioling.org/). At MTSU, she was i...
Read More »Aleka Akoyunoglou Blackwell joined the MTSU English department in 2001. She is the founder of the Annual MTSU Linguistics Olympiad (www.mtsu.edu/lo). She is currently a co-chair of the North American Computational Linguistics competition (www.nacloweb.org) and also serves as a coach for the US team at the International Linguistics Olympiad (https://ioling.org/). At MTSU, she was instrumental in the creation of the interdisciplinary minor in Linguistic Studies as well as the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Literacy Studies. Dr. Blackwell teaches courses in introductory linguistics, syntactic theory, lexical semantics, lexicography, and English grammar. Her research explores lexical acquisition, the structure of the mental lexicon, and vocabulary assessment.
Recent Publications
Blackwell, A. A. (2019). A cluster analysis approach to assessing vocabulary and targeting intervention. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Mental Lexicon, 1, e103. https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-7t3m-c874
Blackwell, A. A. & Flipse, J. (2019). An item-response theory analysis of the Verb Subordinates Test. Selected Papers on Theoretical and Applied Linguistics from 23rd ISTAL, Thessaloniki 31 March – 2 April 2017, 45-59. https://doi.org/10.26262/istal.v23i0.7320