Silje Susanne Alvestad

Silje Susanne Alvestad is a linguist with a particular interest in how linguistics can shed light on the major societal challenges of our time. Since 2020, she has been conducting research on linguistic features of fake news and (other types of) mis- and disinformation. She is currently working, among other things, on identifying linguistic characteristics of AI-generated disinformation and other misleading textual content produced by large language models. 

Alvestad is currently PI of the interdisciplinary research projects Towards Detecting AI-Generated Disinformation: Fakespeak in the Age of Large Language Models (NxtGenFake), Towards detecting AI-generated disinformation (NxtGenFake) - Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, and MINDCRAFT, funded by the Research Council of Norway and the Norwegian Ministry of Defence, respectively. 

Between 2020 and 2025, she was PI of the interdisciplinary research project Fakespeak – The Language of Fake News: Fake News Detection Based on Linguistic Cues, The language of fake news (Fakespeak) - Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, funded by the Research Council of Norway. The aim of the project was to investigate whether fake news could be identified based on linguistic features, and whether fact-checking tools could be improved by incorporating such features. 

Education 

1998–1999: Russian Language and Officer Candidate Course (Norwegian Defence Intelligence and Security School), at the time accredited as both a non-commissioned officer training program and an undergraduate-level course in Russian 

2000: Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian Language Course (Norwegian Defence Intelligence and Security School) 

2006: MA in Slavic Languages (University of Oslo) 

2013: PhD in Linguistics in Slavic Languages (University of Oslo) 

2014: MA in Turkish Language with a 40-credit component in Hebrew (University of Oslo) 

Awards 

2014: H.M. The King of Norway’s Gold Medal for best dissertation in the humanities (University of Oslo) 

Research Grants (and role) 

2025–2029: Researcher Project, DEMOKRATI OG GLOBAL UTVIKLING, Research Council of Norway (PI)

2026–2028: Research Project, Grant Scheme of the Ministry of Defence, Norwegian Ministry of Defence (PI) 

2020–2025: Researcher Project, SAMRISK, Research Council of Norway (PI) 

Other 

During the period 2015–2020, Alvestad was a postdoctoral researcher, and since 2020 she has been a researcher at the University of Oslo. She has taught at both BA and MA levels, including courses in Russian language, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian language and literature, and comparative Slavistics. She has supervised master’s students and is currently the main supervisor for a PhD candidate. 

Alvestad has previously served in the Norwegian Armed Forces in the Balkans. 

• Linguistics 
• Applied linguistics 
• Forensic linguistics 
• Corpus linguistics 
• Fake news 
• Propaganda  
• Disinformation 
• AI-generated language in general; the language of AI-generated disinformaton in particular 
• Large language models 
• Psychological/cognitive defence and resilience