Heike Behrens (born 18 January 1962 in Itzehoe, Germany)[1] is a German linguist who is professor of cognitive linguistics and language acquisition at the University of Basel.
[2] Heike Behrens studied German and English at Kiel University, and received her doctorate in general linguistics at the University of Amsterdam in 1993.
[1] She worked at the Technical University of Braunschweig (1987-1989), at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen (1989-1992), at UC Berkeley (1995-6), at the University of Cologne (1996-8), and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (1998-2002).
[2] She was then appointed professor of German linguistics at the University of Groningen in 2002, before taking up her current position as professor of cognitive linguistics and language acquisition at the University of Basel in 2005.
[2] Her dissertation dealt with the use of verbs by child acquirers of German.