Samuel K. Ahmed

Education

• Research master (MA): Leiden University
• 2020 - 2023
• Graduated cum laude
• Included attending 3 LOT Summer/Winter schools
• Bachelor (BA): University of Cambridge (Clare College)
• 2017 - 2020

Qualifications

• Dutch B2 state exam (Staatsexamen Nederlands als tweede taal: Programma II)

Research

• Ahmed, S. K. (2023). Acoustic correlates and diagnostics of ATR in Boa-Leboale. Leiden University. (Research MA dissertation). https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3638267
• Ahmed, S. K., Samuel Andersson & Bert Vaux. (2021). English Phonology and Morphology. In Bas Aarts, April McMahon and Lars Hinrichs (eds.), The Handbook of English Linguistics, 345-364 (ch.18). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119540618.ch18
• Ahmed, S. K. (2020). Rhotic Vowel Harmony in Yurok. University of Cambridge. (Unpublished BA dissertation).

Teaching

• University of Amsterdam
• Speech processing (2024-25)
• Scripting in Praat, creating audio stimuli, running perception experiments
• Phonetics (2024-25)
• Articulation, acoustics and perception of sounds
• Research methods and statistics (2024-25)
• Research design, ethics, scripting in R, linear and logistic regression analysis
• Transcription (2024-25)
• Production and perception of the sounds on the IPA chart, principles of sound change
• Linguistic theories: Optimality Theory (2024-25)
• Working through a theoretical analysis in OT
• Leiden University
• Phonology 1 (2023-24)
• Phonology 1 (2022-23)
• The Phonology of English (2021-22)
• The Phonetics of English (2021-22)

Other academic work

• BA thesis supervision:
• Age Differences Between Speakers with Regards to Neutral Vowels in Hungarian Vowel Harmony (2025)
• An Optimality Theory Account of Information Structure Marking in Modern Greek (2025)
• A Computational Model for Finnish Vowel Harmony: The Gradual Specification of Neutral Vowels in Derivation (2025)
• 2024: Prepared LaTeX files for the BaSIS project book The expression of information structure in Bantu (edited by Jenneke van der Wal).
• 2023: Presented Using acoustics to determine ATR class in Boa-Leboale at the lecture series This Time for Africa!.

Volunteering

• Member of the IOL Problem Committee
• Since March 2018
• (Co-)wrote problems on Yurok colours, Nooni tenses, Zuni compounds, Kilivila classifiers, Nǀuuki focus, Guazacapán Xinka derivations, Hadza genders
• Also jury member (grading the contestants' solutions) at IOLs 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025.
• Chair of the IOL Problem Committee and Jury
• For the IOL 2022 cycle (from July 2021 to July 2022)
• Led the PC in preparing the problem set and coordinated the in-person jury of graders.
• Member of the Training/Test development teams for the UK Linguistics Olympiad
• From Jan 2018 to Jul 2021

Skills

• Languages:
• English (native)
• Dutch (B2)
• Have followed courses on many other languages (incl. French, Mandarin Chinese, Ukrainian, Irish, Icelandic, British Sign Language)
• Basic interactive web design (HTML, CSS, Javascript)
• Praat scripting
• R scripting
• LaTeX typesetting