Hi, I'm Vagrant!

I do research on social and technical aspects of trustworthy natural language processing. In other words, I want to get computers to do things with human language fairly and faithfully. Currently, however, I am on vacation celebrating the submission of my PhD thesis (in computer science, at Saarland University), before I start my Independent Postdoc Fellowship at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies in September 2025.

The technical side of my research involves proposing methods and evaluations that are inspired by linguistics (e.g., for pronominal reasoning or question answering). On the social side, I investigate gaps, opportunities, and societal implications related to how we define and operationalize abstract concepts in NLP (e.g., democratization or gender). In both types of work, I value interdisciplinarity and methodological pluralism.

You may have known me under a different name but I go by Vagrant now. Please refer to me with they/them or xe/xem pronouns, and use Mx (pronounced like "mix") if you absolutely must use a title. My name is pronounced exactly like the English word, i.e., /'veɪ.gɹɘnt.'gaʊ.tʌm/, because I love birds and birding. Press the play button to hear it.

Vagrant, a brown-skinned person with short curly black hair, smiles at the camera. They are wearing all-black clothes, a black leather jacket, and a leather choker with spikes. Their hand holds a mocktail in a wine glass.