I am a linguist with expertise in sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, the sociology of language, linguistic anthropology and mixed-method research. I completed my PhD (Slavic Linguistics) at LMU Munich in May 2023.

Up to the conclusion of my PhD, I have been working on sociolinguistic issues in Russian, Hebrew, Tatar, German and Ukrainian, among others.

Currently, I am most interested in how the environment influences shift away from heritage languages. The languages I currently focus on are Albanian and BCMS.

• language maintenance and shift
• language vitality
• heritage language
• language policy
• language in space, ecolinguistics
• migration
• language and gender
• social identity construction

Last updated: January 2026

04 – 09 / 2025: PI of research project on Heritage language ecologies, financed through Career Grant by GRC UZH (14,000 CHF). Research assistant: Jolina Saliquni

• Fieldwork in Switzerland: Interviews and cognitive maps

12 / 2024 – 2 / 2025: Visiting postdoctoral fellow, University of Chicago, Department of Linguistics (SNSF Scientific Exchanges, 10,500 CHF)

6 / 2023 – present: Postdoctoral fellow, University of Zurich, Slavic Department,

3–5 / 2023: Research Assistantship, University of Zurich, Slavic Department,

5 / 2023: PhD thesis defense

1 / 2023: Submission of PhD thesis Language Attitudes and Social Identity. A Study on Russian-Speaking Immigrant Communities in Israel and Germany

9-12 / 2021 Visiting research stay at UC Berkeley, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (10,300 EUR)

10 / 2019-2 / 2020 Research exchange, Tel Aviv University; fieldwork

4 / 2019-5 / 2023 PhD, Graduate School Language and Literature – Class of Language, LMU Munich; financed through a PhD scholarship by Hanns Seidel Foundation, Germany (74,400 EUR)

12 / 2018 – 3 / 2019 Fieldwork in Germany

11 / 2018 Pilot study and fieldwork in Israel

9 / 2017 MA thesis fieldwork in Tatarstan

10 / 2016-9 / 2018 MA “Cultural and Cognitive Linguistics”, LMU Munich

2-6 / 2016 Overseas scholarship exchange at Moscow State University, Historical Faculty and Philological Faculty

9 / 2014-2 / 2015 Erasmus scholarship exchange at LMU Munich, Institute for German as a Foreign Language

9 / 2013-10 / 2016 BA “European Languages and Cultures”, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia

Monographs

• Lucchetti, Cristiana. (under contract) Language, Migration and Identity. The Post-Soviet Diaspora in Israel and Germany. Book series: Interdisciplinary Linguistics. Berlin: Brill De Gruyter
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2023. Language Attitudes and Social Identity. A Study on Russian-Speaking Immigrant Communities in Israel and Germany. Dissertation, University of Munich. https://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/32749/

Edited volumes

• Striedl, Philipp, Cristiana Lucchetti, Sara Racca and Aleksej Tikhonov. (under contract) Landscapes in Language, Society and Cognition. Book series: Interdisciplinary Linguistics. Berlin: Brill De Gruyter
• Muchnik, Malka, Letizia Cerqueglini and Cristiana Lucchetti. (under contract) Language and Place. Multilingual Practices and Identity. Book series: Trends in Applied Linguistics. Berlin: Brill De Gruyter
• Tikhonov, Aleksej and Cristiana Lucchetti. 2025. Rap und die slawischen Sprachen. Bielefeld: Transcript. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839472989

Book chapters

• Lucchetti, Cristiana. (accepted) The Ideology of Script Systems: A Case Study on the Graffiti Landscape of Novi Sad, Serbia. In Muchnik, Malka, Letizia Cerqueglini and Cristiana Lucchetti (eds.) Language and Places: Multilingual Practices and Identity. Leiden: Brill
• Tikhonov, Aleksej and Cristiana Lucchetti. 2025. BKMS-deutsche Mehrsprachigkeit und die Aushandlung hybrider Identitäten in den Texten von Rappern in Deutschland und der Schweiz. In Tikhonov, Aleksej and Cristiana Lucchetti (eds.) Rap und die slawischen Sprachen, pp.  37-78. Bielefeld: Transcript DOI: DOI: 10.14361/9783839472989-003

Articles in journals

• Lucchetti, Cristiana. (in preparation) Heritage language ecologies. Evidence from heritage Albanian and BCMS.
• Holzer, Johanna, Cristiana Lucchetti and Hans-Jörg Schmid. (in preparation) An Entrenchment and Conventionalization approach to language mixing. To be submitted to Cognitive Linguistics.
• Zimmermann, Ronja, Cristiana Lucchetti and Jolina Saliquni.  Language attitudes do not correlate with language use. Evidence from two heritage speaker communities. To be submitted to Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.
• Karl, Katrin B. and Cristiana Lucchetti. 2025. Der herkunftssprachliche Unterricht des Bosnischen, Kroatischen, Serbischen und Albanischen in Zürich und Bern. Eine soziolinguistische Bestandaufnahme. In: DiSlaw Didaktik Slawischer Sprachen nr. 2. https://doi.org/10.48789/2025.2.6
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2024. Language attitudes and the construction of group identity amongst post-Soviet immigrants in Israel and Germany. A comparative analysis. In: Migration and everyday life of (post-)Soviet diaspora nationalities in Journal for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe. Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, pp. 87-106. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111369204-006
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2021. Integration, self-perception and identity construction amongst young adults from the former Soviet Union in Germany. A qualitative case study. In: European Graduate Fellows Conference Journal, August 2021, pp. 96 – 99. New Haven: European Studies Council at the Whitney & Betty MacMillan Center for International & Area Studies at Yale University. https://issuu.com/yaleeuropeanstudies/docs/europe_today_conference_journal-2021
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2021. Obscene language and the renegotiation of gender roles in post-Soviet contexts. Pragmatics and Cognition, Volume 28, Issue 1, Dec 2021, p. 57 – 86. John Benjamins Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.00021.luc

Book reviews

• Lucchetti, Cristiana (in preparation) Book review of Werani, Anke. 2023. Sprache und Identität: Eine Einführung. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. 298 pp. Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur Germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft.
• Lucchetti, Cristiana (accepted) Book review of Panagiotidis, Jannis and Hans-Christian Petersen. 2024. Antiosteuropäischer Rassismus in Deutschland. Geschichte und Gegenwart. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz Juventa, 238 Seiten, 20 Abbildungen,  ISBN 978-3-7799-6823-8, 25 €. Südost-Forschungen 2025.
• Lucchetti, Cristiana (accepted) Book note on Šipka, Danko. 2023. Water, whiskey, and vodka: A story of Slavic languages. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Pp. 296. Pb. $35. Language in Society.
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2024. Rezension von Siebenhütter, Stefanie. 2022. Mehrsprachigkeit und Identität. Zur Identitätskonstruktion mehrsprachiger Minderheiten am Beispiel der Kui in Nordostthailand. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. Kovač. Zeitschrift für angewandte Linguistik, De Gruyter
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2023. Barberio, Teresa (2021): Schreiben in zwei Sprachen. Argumentative und narrative Texte bilingualer italienisch-deutscher Schülerinnen und Schüler. München: LMU München Open Publishing in the Humanities, 325 Seiten. ISBN 978-3-95925-162-4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5282/oph.11. Daz-portal.de, Ausgabe 25b, Rezension 3, September 2023. https://www.daz-portal.de/de/rezensionen/pdf-dateien-rezensionen/25-rezensionsrunde-teil-b/3_lucchetti-rezensiert-barberio.pdf
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2021. Book review of Postsowjetische Migration in Deutschland by Jannis Panagiotidis, 2021. In: May-June issue of Politische Studien. Magazin für Politik und Gesellschaft. Munich: Hanns Seidel Foundation Press. https://www.hss.de/publikationen/rezension-postsowjetische-migration-in-deutschland-pub1826/
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2021. Book review of Der verspielte Frieden in Bosnien. Europas Versagen auf dem Balkan by Christian Schwarz-Schilling, 2021. In: September-October issue of Politische Studien. Magazin für Politik und Gesellschaft. Munich: Hanns Seidel Foundation Press. https://www.hss.de/publikationen/rezension-der-verspielte-frieden-in-bosnien-pub1910/

Open access datasets and data

• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2025. Language attitudes and social identity among Russian-speaking immigrants in Israel and Germany. https://doi.org/10.48656/an3f-v546
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2025. Grapholinguistic landscape of Novi Sad, Serbia (Version 1.0) [Data set]. LaRS - Language Repository of Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.48656/06rz-df15
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2025. Questionnaire on Heritage Languages in Switzerland (Version 1.0) [Data set]. LaRS - Language Repository of Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.48656/yz0p-6h88
• Lucchetti, Cristiana. 2024. Interview mit Dritëro Gjukaj. Zürich: Slavisches Seminar der Universität Zürich. Available at: https://www.slav.uzh.ch

Science to public

• www.languageland.eu
• On Serbinfo.ch: 
  • https://serbinfo.ch/istrazivanje-univeziteta-u-cririhu-uloga-jezika-u-zivotu-balkanske-dijaspore-u-svajcarskoj/(Serbian)
• On Albinfo.ch: 
  • https://www.albinfo.ch/gjuha-shqipe-ne-zvicer-tema-qendrore-e-numrit-me-te-ri-te-revistes-albinfo-ch/(Albanian)
  • https://www.albinfo.ch/dr-cristiana-lucchetti-shqipja-gjuhe-shume-e-perhapur-ne-zvicer-por-ende-pak-e-vleresuar/(Albanian)
  • https://www.albinfo.ch/de/dr-cristiana-lucchetti-albanisch-wird-in-der-schweiz-immer-noch-unterschaetzt/(German)
  • https://www.albinfo.ch/universiteti-i-cyrihut-me-projekt-per-rolin-e-gjuhes-shqipe-ne-zvicer/(Albanian)
  • https://www.albinfo.ch/dr-cristiana-lucchetti-shqipja-ne-zvicer-nder-me-te-folurat-por-ende-e-padukshme/(Albanian)
  • https://www.albinfo.ch/de/dr-cristiana-lucchetti-albanisch-zwischen-mehrsprachigkeit-und-unsichtbarkeit/(German)