Strengthening Multilingualism Research: Assoc Prof Lin Jingxia Secures MOE SSHR Grant

Congratulations to Assoc Prof Lin Jingxia, Associate Vice Provost (Wellness & Wellbeing) and Associate Professor at the School of Humanities, on receiving the 2025 MOE SSHR Thematic Grant (TG) for her project, Singapore Mandarin Usage Dictionary: A Computational Lexical Infrastructure for Localised Language.

About the project:

This project will develop the most extensive open-access bilingual dictionary of Singapore Mandarin to date. By combining linguistic research, large-scale language corpora, and computational modelling, it aims to systematically identify and document words, meanings, and usage patterns unique to Singapore Mandarin. The findings will advance research on language variation, multilingualism, and language change, while contributing to the development of the World Chineses framework, which highlights the global diversity and localisation of Chinese language varieties.

The resulting platform will serve educators, students, translators, media professionals, natural language processing (NLP) developers, and the wider public. Developed in collaboration with key national stakeholders, including the Ministry of Education and Lianhe Zaobao, the project will support the development of more locally attuned language technologies and strengthen Singapore’s linguistic infrastructure. More broadly, it will contribute to documenting and preserving Singapore’s unique linguistic heritage, making it more accessible to researchers, educators, and communities in Singapore and beyond.

Reflecting on the award, Assoc Prof Lin shared: “This grant encourages us to continue advancing research on language variation and multilingualism while contributing to education, language technology, and Singapore’s linguistic heritage. We are grateful for the strong support from the College and School research offices throughout this journey.”

The College congratulates Assoc Prof Lin on this outstanding achievement and looks forward to the contributions her research will make to language scholarship and Singapore’s linguistic heritage.