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Khalid Al-Khatib portrait
Computational Linguistics, University of Groningen Computational Linguistics Webis Webis
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Oude Kijk in 't Jatstraat 26, Groningen khalid.alkhatib@rug.nl
Faculty

Khalid Al-Khatib

Assistant Professor in NLP · University of Groningen

Khalid Al-Khatib leads ArgsBase Lab. His work spans computational argumentation, discourse analysis, structured reasoning, and human–AI deliberation, with an emphasis on systems that make reasoning more visible, interactive, and useful for critical thinking.

Computational Argumentation Human–AI Reasoning Deliberation Discourse Analysis

Experience

Selected academic positions across Groningen, Leipzig, Weimar, IBM Research, and Stuttgart.

2022–presentAssistant Professor · University of Groningen

Assistant Professor in NLP within the Computational Linguistics environment.

2020–2021Postdoctoral Researcher · Leipzig University

Research on argument-centered NLP and scholarly argumentation.

2020Postdoctoral Researcher · Martin-Luther University / Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Work on structured argument generation and related language technologies.

Earlier roleResearcher · Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Research focused on the computational analysis of argumentation strategies.

Research internshipResearch Intern · IBM Research Ireland

Industrial research experience in argument-centered language technology.

2011–2013Researcher · Institute for NLP, University of Stuttgart

Earlier research experience in NLP and computational language analysis.

Education

A concise summary of the academic path behind the group’s research direction.

PhD in Computer Science

  • Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
  • Dissertation: Computational Analysis of Argumentation Strategies.
  • Advisor: Benno Stein; external examiner: Manfred Stede.

Master’s and visiting graduate study

  • MSc in Computer Science, Jordan University of Science & Technology.
  • Visiting Graduate Student, Masaryk University.
This trajectory connects computational linguistics with long-running work on argument mining, persuasion, discourse, search, and interactive reasoning systems.

Area chair and reviewing

Service across major NLP conferences, workshops, and journals.

Area chair rolesACL, EACL, COLING, EMNLP
  • ACL 2023 and 2025.
  • EACL 2023.
  • COLING 2022, 2024, and 2025.
  • EMNLP 2025.
Reviewing activityACL, NAACL, EMNLP, AAAI, journals
  • Conference reviewing for ACL, NAACL, AAAI, COLING, EMNLP, and EACL.
  • Long-running reviewing for the ArgMining workshop series.
  • Journal reviewing for Language Resources and Evaluation, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Engineering, Argument & Computation, and JAIR.

Organization

Workshops, seminars, tutorials, and community-building activity.

Workshops and seminarsDagstuhl, Lorentz, ArgMining, ArgKG, Vis4NLP
  • Co-organizer of the Lorentz workshop Hybrid Argumentation and Responsible AI.
  • Co-organizer of the Dagstuhl seminar Towards a Unified Model of Scholarly Argumentation.
  • Co-chair of the 8th Workshop on Argument Mining.
  • Co-chair of the first Workshop on Argumentation Knowledge Graphs.
  • Co-chair of the first Workshop on Visualization for Natural Language Processing (Vis4NLP).
Tutorials and shared tasksArgumentation Technology for AI, Same-Side Stance
  • Co-presenter of the tutorial Argumentation Technology for AI.
  • Co-organizer of the Same-Side Stance shared task at ArgMining.

Supervision

Selected master’s and bachelor’s thesis topics supervised across Weimar, Leipzig, and Groningen.

Master’s thesesSelected topics
  • Identifying effective deliberation strategies in Wikipedia talk pages.
  • Identifying debating strategies in persuasive discussions.
  • Generating arguments depending on argumentation schemes.
  • Style-based analysis of persuasive strategies.
  • Mining high-ethos evidence from Wikipedia.
  • Harvesting the web for building large-scale argumentation graphs.
Bachelor’s thesesSelected topics
  • Identifying debating strategies on Wikipedia.
  • Detecting bias in media.
  • Linking argumentative concepts in argumentation graphs.
  • Detecting bias in summarization.
  • Discourse marker usage in written and speech discourse.
  • Exploiting argumentation knowledge graphs for argument generation.
Earlier scholarships include support from the University of Stuttgart, Erasmus Mundus Action 2, and Jordan University of Science and Technology.
For the wider group context, see the research page, publications, and teaching.