Biography

Luuk Van Waes is Professor emeritus in the domain of Professional and Digital Communication at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). During his career he has mainly researched writing processes, with a focus on digital writing environments, and the cognitive and social dimensions of writing. Drawing on cognitive psychology, linguistics, usability research, and educational sciences, he has developed theoretical and empirical insights into writing strategies, fluency, pausing and revision behavior, and the impact of digital tools on writing practices.
Van Waes’s academic journey began with a background in linguistics and communication studies, leading him to explore the intersection of writing and technology. He is a key figure in the development and research using Inputlog, a keystroke logging tool designed to study writing and translation processes. Together with Mariëlle Leijten and Eric Van Horenbeeck he delopped the program. Through collaborations with scholars across disciplines all over the world, he set up studies to analyze how people in different settings and with different backgrounds compose texts in real-time. The studies focused, for instance, on L1-L2-L3 comparisons, academic writing, text simplification, subtitling with speech recognition, dementia, fluency, professional writing (e.g., journalists, novelists), students with dyslexia, elderly people with dementia  etc. Inputlog is widely used all over the world to study writing in academic and professional settings to better understand writing behavior. More recently, Inputlog was further developed to also facilitate its use in classroom settings (e.g., to give process feedback to students). Through collaborations with statitical scholars across disciplines (Hub van den Bergh, Sven de Maeyer, Rianne Conijn) also new and advanced statistical analyses were introduced to better address logdata characteristics.
As a writing researcher Luuk Van Waes collaborated with colleagues all over the world, and published collaborative research outcomes in leading academic journals, and in edited books. A strong advocate for open-access scholarship, Van Waes is one of the founding fathers of the Journal of Writing Research, an international academic journal dedicated to the study of writing in all its forms.

Selected Publications:

   Roeser, J., De Maeyer, S., Leijten, M., & Van Waes, L. (2024). Modelling typing disfluencies using Bayesian mixture models, Reading and Writing: An interdisciplinary journal, 37 , 359–384. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10203-z
   Buschenhenke, F., Conijn, R., & Van Waes, L. (2024). Measuring non-linearity of multi-session writing processes, Reading and Writing: An interdisciplinary journal, 37, 511–537. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-023-10449-9
   Rossetti, A., & Van Waes, L. (2022). Revision of business content on corporate social responsibility: Measuring the impact of training on the cognitive effort of second-language university students. Hermes – Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 62, 27-54. https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.vi62.132262
   Conijn,R., Spelz, E., C., Van Zaanen, M., Chukharev-Hudilainen, E., & Van Waes, L. (2022). A product and process oriented tagset for revisions in writing. Written Communication, 39(1), 97-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/07410883211052104
   Van Waes, L., Leijten, M., Roeser, J. Olive, T., & Grabowski, J. (2021). Measuring and assessing typing skills in writing research. Journal of Writing Research, 13(1), 107-153. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2021.13.01.04
   Vandermeulen, N., Leijten, M., & Van Waes, L. (2020). Reporting writing process feedback in the classroom: Using keystroke logging data to reflect on writing processes. Journal of Writing Research, 12(1), 109-140. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2020.12.01.05
   Van Waes, L., Leijten, M., Mariën, P., & Engelborghs, S. (2017). Typing competencies in Alzheimer’s disease: An exploration of copy tasks. Computers in Human Behavior, 73, 311-319. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.050.