Brocca, Nicola, Dr., Priv.-Doz.

Portrait Nicola Brocca

Innrain 52, room no. 40501a, 5th floor, Geiwi Tower

Consultation hours: by appointment

+43/512/507-43011

nicola.brocca@uibk.ac.at

@nicola_brocca

https://uibk.academia.edu/nicolabrocca

https://orcid.org/ 0000-0001-5318-0162

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=fr&user=n0EMhLsAAAAJ

About the person

  • University Assistant (Postdoc), Department of subject-specific Education, University of Innsbruck | May 2019 – present
  • Venia Docendi in “Foreign Language Didactics and Italian Linguistics,” University of Innsbruck | June 2025 – Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale, 10/G1 Glottologia e linguistica, Fascia ii. 
  • Visiting Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Modern Cultures, University of Turin | February – March 2023
  • Postdoc, Heidelberg School of Education | February 2017 – April 2019
  • Teacher of Italian as a Native Language, Märkischer Kreis School District | March 2015 – January 2017
  • Lecturer in Italian, Boğaziçi University, Faculty of Education (50%) and Yeditepe University, Department of Fine Arts (50%), Istanbul | October 2009 – June 2012
  • Ph.D. at Heidelberg University, Romance Linguistics. Scholarship recipient of the German Business Foundation, visiting researcher at the City University of New York | 2006–2010

Teaching

  • Pragmatics in Italian as a Second Language and Its Didactics
  • Media-Supported Foreign Language Instruction
  • Corpora in Foreign Language Instruction

I am happy to supervise Bachelor's and Master's theses in the following subject areas:
i. The didactics of Italian in multilingual contexts
ii. Language biographies of bilingual children and adults
iii. Telecollaboration: Feedback, interaction between native and non-native speakers, pragmatic (learning) episodes
iv. Use of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT as an innovative resource in foreign language learning and teaching
v. Students’ own topic proposals are welcome and will be gladly supervised

 

Research

Task culture

  • DIGITASK4IC: Development of a platform for the creation of teaching/learning materials for a foreign language. Head: Ass. Prof. Ufuk Balaman, Hacettepe Üniversitesi, Dr Carmen Konzett-Firth, University of Innsbruck. Funded by: Erasmus+, | 2021 - 2022
  • Science4Life-Academy: Creation of OER MINT materials for students with little knowledge of German. Activity: Scientific advisor. Organisation: a project of the iMINT Academy of the Berlin Senate for Education, Youth and Family funded by Bayer Science & Education Foundation |2015 - 2017

Global Citizenship Education

  • DIGITASK4IC | 2021 - 2022
  • Promotion of Italian abroad. A comparative study in France and Germany. Final thesis: 2005

Skills acquisition

  • DISDIR: Pragmalinguistic competences in interlinguistic comparison (German-Italian). Activities: Production of a corpus, pragmalinguistic analyses. Project partners: prof. ssa Elena Nuzzo and Ass. Prof. Diego Cortés Velásquez, Università Roma Tre. | 2021 - ongoing
  • Semantics of prepositions in Italian L2 by German-speaking learners. Doctorate: 2007 - 2011

Media & Digitality

  • LADDER: Creation of a corpus for the promotion of sociopragmatic competences in Italian L2. Activities: Project manager. Funded by DI4DH, Austrian Academy of Sciences | 2020 - ongoing
  • DIGITASK4IC | 2021 - 2022
  • Implicit language in social media: pragmatic analysis of political tweets. Psycholinguistic findings and didactic transfer. Project partners: Dr Davide Garassino, ZHAW, dott. ssa. Viviana Masia, Università Roma Tre
  • Digital media in heritage language teaching: Activity: Teacher surveys, design-based research and teacher training with the Migration Office of the Cologne District Government. | 2019 - ongoing

Language-sensitive teaching

  • LADDER | 2020 - ongoing

Publications

  • Nuzzo, E., Brocca, N., (2025). Sviluppo di competenze pragmatiche in ambienti telecollaborativi. Roma TrE-Press. DOI: 10.13134/979-12-5977-440-8
  • Brocca, N., Nuzzo. E., Cortés Velásquez D. (2026) Exploring Pragmatic Competence in “New Italians”: Refusals and Cancellations in Certit B1 Candidates’ Voice Messages. Applied Pragmatics.
  • Brocca, N., Nuzzo E., & Wang J. (2026). AI-driven speech act annotation: accuracy and reproducibility across ChatGPT, LadderWeb and LLaMA. AI-Linguistica. Linguistic Studies on AI-Generated Texts and Discourses, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.62408/ai-ling.v3i1.33
  • Garassino, D., Brocca, N., & Masia, V., (2025) ChatGPT for President!  Presupposed content in politicians versus GPT-generated texts. In Applied Corpus Linguistics, 5(3), 100156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acorp.2025.100156, Q1
  • Brocca, N., & Iniesta Jiménez, R., (2025). Un estudio sobre el uso de ChatGPT para resolver tareas escritas en la clase de ELE. Babylonia, 1(2025), 28. https://babylonia.online/index.php/babylonia/article/view/498/652
  • Schmiderer, K., Brocca, N., Guggenbichler, E., & Konzett-Firth, C. (2025). Exploring pre-service teachers’ criteria for evaluating collaboratively designed online tasks. Task: Journal on Task-Based Language Teaching and Learning. 5:1 pp.57–89, https://doi.org/10.1075/task.24001.sch
  • Brocca N., Nuzzo, E., Cortés Velásquez D., Rudigier M. (2023): Linguistic politeness across Austria and Italy: Backing out of an invitation with an instant message, Journal of Pragmatics 209, p. 56-70, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2023.02.018

All publications

Scientific organisation

  • Head of the AI in Education Working Group, Faculty of Teacher Education
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