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(After retirement I gave up my subscription to the BCS, so the letters FBCS and CITP are no longer current.)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