Sarah Dessì Schmid has been (W3) Professor of Romance Philology (Italian and French Linguistics with Spanish and Catalan) at the Romance Department of the Universität Tübingen since October 2013. She is member of the Faculty Council of the Faculty of Humanities and of the Senate of the University, and Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Humanities. She is board member of Deutscher Italianistikverband (DIV), Società Internazionale di Filologia e Linguistica Italiana (SILFI), Zentrum Vormodernes Europa at Universität Tübingen, Institut Culturel Franco-Allemand, Tübingen and CRC 1391 “Andere Ästhetik”.
After her studies at the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza" (1990-1995), she received her PhD in Romance Philology (Tübingen, 2003) with a thesis comparing the language theories of Ernst Cassirer and Benedetto Croce and her Habilitation (Tübingen 2013; Umhabilitierung: Stuttgart, 2013) with a monography on aspectuality.
As a humanities scholar, she feels just as connected to the traditional Romance comparative way of thinking as to newer theoretical-linguistic approaches of a cognitive nature and combines both with interests in the philosophy of language and cultural studies. In her research she focuses on semantics and morphosyntax of the verb (aspect and Aktionsart, interaction of TMA-Categories, modal uses of the imperfect, verbal periphrases) and functional categories in onomasiological perspective (Aspectuality, Modality, Mirativity), philosophy of language and semiotics, history of language (standardisation theories, linguistic purism), language change (grammaticalisation theories) and variational linguistics. Her recent main research projects also are thematically based in these fields: “Verbal and nominal aspectuality between Lexicon and Grammar“ (with W. Mihatsch, by CRC 883: The construction of meaning, 2017-2021); „Purism – Discourses and practices of linguistic purity “, “Linguistic Purism and Aesthetics of Manners in Early Modern Conversation Literature”, “Techniques of Amplification in Early Modern Epideictics” (with J. Robert and D. Till by CRC 1391: Different Aesthetics, 2019-2027).
