Geoffrey Sampson

Career

Birth and Civil Status

• Born in 1944 at Broxbourne, Herts.
• Joint citizenship, UK/Ireland

Employment

Until 2009 I was a professor at the University of Sussex, where I worked in the School of Informatics; in that year I reached what was then the compulsory retirement age at Sussex, which granted me the “professor emeritus” status. After Sussex I moved to the University of South Africa as a research fellow for several years. For more information about my working life, see under “Profession” in my Life page.

Degrees, Professional Qualifications, etc.

• MA (Cambridge); MA (Yale); MA (Oxford, by incorporation)
• PhD (Cambridge, under the special regulations)
• FBCS (Fellow of the British Computer Society)
• CITP (Chartered Information Technology Professional)
• FHEA (Fellow of the Higher Education Academy)

(After retirement I gave up my subscription to the BCS, so the letters FBCS and CITP are no longer current.)

Education

• Bristol Grammar School, 1952–62
• St John’s College, University of Cambridge, 1962–5
  — Scholar of the College
  — 1st class honours, Parts I and II of Oriental Studies Tripos
  — Pass with Distinction, Oral Examination in Mandarin Chinese
• Yale University, 1965–7 and 1968–9
  — English-Speaking Union Fellow
  — studying in Departments of Linguistics and Engineering & Applied Science

Employment History

• Research Fellow in Vietnamese, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, 1967–8
• Fellow, Queen’s College, University of Oxford, 1969–72
• Lecturer, London School of Economics, 1972–4
• Lecturer, from 1976 Reader, University of Lancaster, 1974–84
  — Founder member, Unit for Computer Research on English Language
• Professor of Linguistics, University of Leeds, 1985–90
  — Founder Director, Centre for Computer Analysis of Language and Speech
• Self-employed language engineering consultant, 1990–1
  — major clients:
  • British Telecom Research Labs (now Adastral Park)
  • Economic & Social Research Council
• Reader, from 1999 Professor, in the School of Informatics (previously Computer Science & AI), University of Sussex, 1991–2009
  — Department Chairman, 1993–96
  — Director, Centre for Advanced Software Applications, 1991–6
• Research Fellow, University of South Africa, 2011–16

External Activities

• Visiting Professor, Institut d’Etudes Sémantiques et Cognitives, Geneva (now IDSIA, Lugano), 1980–1
• Visiting Professor, University of Cape Town, 1982
• Visiting Professor, Wits (University of the Witwatersrand), 1988
• Consultant, Research Initiative in Pattern Recognition, Royal Signals & Radar Establishment (now Qinetiq), 1989–90
• Participant in the US/EU-sponsored Text Encoding Initiative (early 1990s)
• Panelist, “Ask-a-Linguist” service, 1997–
• Executive Board member, ELSNET — the European “Network of Excellence” in Human Language Technologies, 1998–
  — responsible for its magazine ELSNews (ended 2004)
• Conservative member of Wealden District Council, 2001–2

Geoffrey Sampson

last changed 9 Nov 2023