Nina Haket

Research Associate

University of East Anglia

nch35 [at] cam.ac.uk

I’m on the Job Market

I am available for postdoctoral, research, and related positions from July 2026. I bring a distinctive combination of theoretical depth in philosophy of language and linguistics with hands-on empirical and computational skills, and I am open to academic, industry, and publishing-adjacent roles. If you think there might be a fit, please get in touch at nch35 [at] cam.ac.uk.

About Me

Hi! I’m Nina Haket, a linguist and philosopher of language working at the intersection of semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy. My research asks fundamental questions about how word meanings work, how they change, and how we can deliberately shape them, combining rigorous theoretical frameworks with empirical and computational methods to produce work that speaks across disciplinary boundaries.

I recently completed my PhD, “Navigating Meaning Spaces: A Contextualist Approach to Conceptual Engineering,” at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Prof. Kasia Jaszczolt. The thesis develops an original account of conceptual engineering grounded in Default Discourse Semantics, integrating philosophy of language, formal semantics, and corpus-based evidence into a unified framework.

I currently work as a Research Associate on the project “Experimental argument analysis: Reasoning with stereotypes” with Profs Eugen Fischer and Paul Engelhardt at the University of East Anglia, where I have led the quantitative analysis for experimental studies examining how stereotypical inferences contribute to reasoning errors. This work has involved designing Prolific-based experimental paradigms, running mixed-effects models in R, and contributing to manuscripts currently under review at high-ranking journals.

Before this, I completed a Research Master’s in Linguistics at Leiden University and a Bachelor’s in Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. Across these roles I have developed an unusually broad methodological profile, combining expertise in formal semantics and philosophy of language with hands-on skills in corpus linguistics, NLP, and statistical analysis.

I’m particularly interested in the semantics-pragmatics interface and its role in language change, and I am actively seeking new research opportunities where I can bring this combination of theoretical depth and empirical range to bear.

Research in Plain English

Words are slippery. The word “marriage” means something different today than it did fifty years ago, and that change did not happen by accident. People argued, lobbied, wrote, and rewrote until the meaning shifted. My research asks: how does that actually work? What is it about language that makes meanings changeable, and what does it take to change them deliberately?

I work on a field called conceptual engineering, which studies how and why we revise the meanings of words, and what the philosophical and linguistic consequences of doing so are. My approach is distinctive in that I do not just theorise about this: I use computational tools to track how word meanings actually cluster and shift in large bodies of text, and I run experiments with real participants to test how different ways of framing a sentence shape the conclusions people draw from it.

The practical upshot is that the words we choose carry more freight than we usually notice. Legal language, political rhetoric, scientific terminology, and everyday conversation all construct the concepts they appear merely to describe. Understanding the mechanics of that construction matters for anyone interested in how knowledge, persuasion, and power work through language.

Research Interests

Areas of specialisation: Conceptual Engineering, Language Change, Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary, Word Meaning

Areas of competence: Historical Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, Philosophy of Language

Methods and Skills

Experimental and quantitative

Large-scale study design and administration (Prolific, Qualtrics)
Statistical modelling in R: linear and cumulative mixed-effects models, ordinal regression, growth curve analysis, Wilcoxon tests, inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s kappa)
Sensitivity and cluster analyses; hierarchical clustering

Computational and corpus

BERT-based distributional semantic modelling and embedding analysis
Corpus compilation, annotation, and analysis
Python for NLP tasks; LaTeX for document preparation

Qualitative and theoretical

Discourse analysis and qualitative data annotation
Theoretical semantics and pragmatics
Multi-layer annotation schema development and inter-annotator reliability

news

Jun 01, 2026	I submitted my corrected PhD thesis to the University of Cambridge on 1st June 2026.
Mar 17, 2026	I passed my PhD viva on 17th March 2026. Many thanks to my examiners for a stimulating discussion.
Jan 31, 2026	I submitted my PhD thesis, “Navigating Meaning Spaces: A Contextualist Perspective on Conceptual Engineering,” to the University of Cambridge on 31st January 2026.
Jan 06, 2026	I’m delighted to announce that I will be joining the University of East Anglia as a Research Associate in the School of Psychology, working on the project “Experimental argument analysis: Reasoning with stereotypes” with Prof. Eugen Fischer and Assoc. Prof. Paul Engelhardt.
Oct 15, 2025	I was shortlisted for the Trinity College Junior Research Fellowship, one of the most prestigious and competitive postdoctoral fellowships in the UK.

Selected Publications

From Words to Propositions: Rethinking Meaning Construction in Conceptual Engineering

N. Haket

Synthese, 2026

Forthcoming

Abs

Conceptual Engineering (CE) aims to improve linguistic meanings for theoretical, social, or political purposes, yet faces persistent implementation challenges. This paper argues that effective intervention requires understanding how propositional content emerges from interactions between lexical meanings and contextual factors. I evaluate different theories of propositions and argue that dynamic functional propositions, formalised through Default Discourse Semantics (DDS), provide a suitable framework for CE. DDS models how different information sources and processes interact to construct communicated content. Using formal analysis and a hypothetical case study, I illustrate what propositional CE would require and suggest how this framework might inform intervention strategies.
BERT’s Conceptual Cartography: Mapping the Landscapes of Meaning

Nina Haket, and Ryan Daniels

Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics, 2025

Abs DOI

Conceptual Engineers want to make words better. However, they often underestimate how varied our usage of words is. In this paper, we take the first steps in exploring the contextual nuances of words by creating conceptual landscapes – 2D surfaces representing the pragmatic usage of words – that conceptual engineers can use to inform their projects. We use the spoken component of the British National Corpus and BERT to create contextualised word embeddings, and use Gaussian Mixture Models, a selection of metrics, and qualitative analysis to visualise and numerically represent lexical landscapes. Such an approach has not yet been used in the conceptual engineering literature and provides a detailed examination of how different words manifest in various contexts that is potentially useful to conceptual engineering projects. Our findings highlight the inherent complexity of conceptual engineering, revealing that each word exhibits a unique and intricate landscape. Conceptual Engineers cannot, therefore, use a one-size-fits-all approach when improving words.
Collaborative Conceptual Engineering: Philosophy and Linguistics

N. Haket

In Conceptual Engineering: Methodological and Metaphilosophical Issues, 2024

Abs DOI

Conceptual Engineering, the critical assessment and amelioration of our concepts, has recently become a veritable buzzword in the field of Philosophy. However, in this work, I argue that Linguistics should have a place in Conceptual Engineering (CE) moving forward, both from an empirical and theoretical angle. After first rejecting the notion that Linguistics cannot be combined with a normative process such as CE, I explore a case study of mass and weight in Early Modern Scientific English with the intent of highlighting the useful insights linguistic empirical tools can bring. I then discuss an interesting contribution to CE from linguistics that comes from pragmatic theories that make psychologically real meaning the focus of attention, in contrast to the more traditional Fregean picture of propositions. In light of this, I discuss a potential semantic framework for CE rooted in linguistics, namely Default Semantics. I consequently discuss how CE could operate within such a linguistic framework and turn to philosophy to help answer some questions linguists cannot. I conclude that CE should be a collaborative enterprise in the future, involving both linguists and philosophers, and that progress can and should be made through such interdisciplinary work.