Hi, I’m Brendan Ryan.
I am currently an English-language copy editor at the open-access academic publishing house Copernicus Publications. In this position, I copy-edit academic articles that span the natural sciences before they are released to be accessed by anyone, anywhere, with no limitations and free of charge.
I completed my Master of Arts in European linguistics (Europäische Sprachwissenschaft) at the University of Freiburg (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, in 2017. My studies and research interests married the ever-changing social, political and linguistic landscape of Europe, and my M.A. thesis, Greek Rhetoric: A critical analysis of discourse in written texts attributed to EU and national leaders in the days before, during and after the 2015 Greek bailout referendum, employed a variety of research methodologies, chief among them critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics.
I graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2015 with a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction in German and Linguistics alongside Honors in the Liberal Arts and a certificate in European studies.
Throughout my studies, I obtained varying levels of fluency in numerous languages. These include the following (ranked by proficiency):
- German and Turkish (advanced);
- French, Spanish and Portuguese (intermediate); and
- American Sign Language and Yucatec Maya (elementary).
Additionally, I have been involved in various research projects focusing on, among other topics, the phonetic and syntactic analysis of the Kiezdeutsch sociolect of German, the American Indian language Menominee and the Oita-ben dialect of Japanese, as well as linguistic descriptions of Ukrainian and Yoruba. Additionally, I have taken courses focusing on Germanic, Slavic and many other languages and language families.
Beyond formal education, I have been able to develop skills needed for a professional, international and public-service-oriented working atmosphere as an AmeriCorps member and community outreach coordinator with WISPIRG Energy Service Corps (summer 2012); an intern with the U.S. Department of State at the U.S. Embassy–Berlin (spring 2013) and International Academic Programs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (2014–2015); as an active alumnus (2013–2014) and staff (2015–2017) of the Academic Year in Freiburg program, as a Study Ambassador (Studienbotschafter) for Baden-Württemberg’s State Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts (2015–2017); and as a research assistant at the University of Freiburg’s German Research Foundation-funded Collaborative Research Center 948 as a German–English translator and English copy-editor (2016–2017). From summer semester 2018 to summer semester 2019, I worked as a course instructor and research assistant in the Department of Germanic Linguistics (Abteilung Germanistische Linguistik) of the University of Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), where I taught courses on the integration of technology into linguistic research and maintained the department’s IT systems. Additionally, I have been an active participant in political events in Germany and the United States and have striven to give back to my host country as an English tutor (2013–2014) and teacher working with immigrants and refugees to Germany (2015–2016).