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Iben Nyholm Debess

Iben Nyholm Debess

PhD Scholar and Coordinator

Former affiliation
 https://orcid.org/0009-0002-9092-1462

  • V. U. Hammershaimbs gøta 22, FO-100 Tórshavn

    Faroe Islands

20092026

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Personal profile

Iben Nyholm Debess is a linguist and PhD Scholar at the Centre for Language Technology at the Faculty of Language and Literature (Føroyamálsdeildin). Iben currently does research in language technology for Faroese language, specializing in evaluation and benchmarks. 

Prior to her current position (2023-), Iben was employed as a Research Assistant at the language department at UFI, and Iben has previously worked with language technology and data developmentand collection (2019-2022) and corpus management and linguistic analysis in the fields of sociolinguistics and bilingualism (2012-2018).

Iben's prior work in language technology includes a project developing data sets for Faroese ASR, as well as a Faroese grapheme-to-phoneme tool (G2P). Iben is currently undertaking a PhD project in evaluation and benchmarks in Faroese, focusing on fair linguistic and cultural representation in data. Iben has also been a part of developing datasets for evaluating sentiment analysis and machine translation, as well as performing human evaluation for various experiments. 

Iben was the local organizer of the large Nordic conference in language technology, NoDaLiDa, held in Tórshavn May 2023. 

Iben is a member of the Language Council of the Faroe Islands. 

Research Interests

Language technology, Faroese language, NLP, Evaluation, Machine Translation, Sentiment Analysis, Semantic Textual Similarity, LLMs

Phonetics, Syntax, Data management

Teaching

- Sociophonetic Fieldwork (2021)

- Faroese phonetics and phonology, focusing on Second Language Aquisition (2023)

- Organising an annual summer course in Faroese language for Nordic language students

Education/Academic qualification

Master, Linguistics, University of Copenhagen

1 Sept 2014 → 1 Aug 2017

Award Date: 1 Aug 2017

Bachelor, Linguistics

1 Sept 2011 → 1 Jul 2014

Award Date: 1 Jul 2014

External positions

Team Leader, ASR data development, Grunnurin Talutøkni

1 Jan 2019 → 1 Feb 2022

Research Assistant, Corpus data, Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, Germany

1 Aug 2017 → 1 Aug 2018

Editor, Bezzerwizzer Aps

Jul 2015 → Dec 2015

Corpus Administrator, LANCHART Centre, University of Copenhagen

1 Dec 2012 → 1 Jan 2016

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Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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  • BRAGD: Constrained Multi-Label POS Tagging for Faroese

    Simonsen, A., Scalvini, B., Johannesen, U., Debess, I. N., Einarsson, H. & Snæbjarnarson, V., 2026, p. 11650-11668. 19 p.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

    Open Access
    File

  • Entity Linking for Faroese Using Large Language Models with Web Search

    Simonsen, A., Debess, I. N. & Einarsson, H., 2026, p. 32-43. 12 p.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

    Open Access
    File

  • Of Words and Meaning: A Grammatical and Semantic Benchmark for Faroese LLM Understanding

    Debess, I. N., Scalvini, B. & Pedersen, B., 2026, p. 4514-4526. 13 p.

    Research output: Contribution to conference › Paper › peer-review

    Open Access
    File

  • Family Matters: Language Transfer and Merging for Adapting Small LLMs to Faroese

    Kunz, J., Debess, I. N. & Simonsen, A., 1 Oct 2025, arXiv, 16 p.

    Research output: Working paper › Preprint

    File
    23 Downloads (Pure)

  • Global PIQA: Evaluating Physical Commonsense Reasoning Across 100+ Languages and Cultures

    Chang, T. A., Arnett, C., Eldesokey, A., Sadallah, A., Kashar, A., Daud, A., Olanihun, A. G., Mohammed, A. L., Praise, A., Sharma, A. M., Gupta, A., Iyigun, A., Simplício, A., Essouaied, A., Chorana, A., Eppa, A., Oladipo, A., Ramesh, A., Dorkin, A. & Kondoro, A. M. & 318 others, Aji, A. F., Çetintaş, A. E., Hanbury, A., Dembele, A., Niksarli, A., Arroyo, Á., Bajand, A., Khanna, A., Chkhaidze, A., Condez, A., Mkhonto, A., Hoblitzell, A., Tran, A., Poulis, A., Majumder, A., Vacalopoulou, A., Wong, A. K. K., Simonsen, A., Kovalev, A., Ashvanth, S., Lana, A. J., Kinay, B., Alhafni, B., Busole, B. C., Ghanem, B., Nathani, B., Đurić, B. S., Agbonile, B., Bergsson, B., Fischer, B. T., Tutar, B., Çınar, B. A., Kane, C. J. K., Udomcharoenchaikit, C., Arnett, C., Helwe, C., Nerella, C. R., Liu, C. C., Nwokolo, C. G., España-Bonet, C., Amol, C., Lee, D., Arad, D., Dzenhaliou, D., Pugacheva, D., Choi, D., Abolade, D., Liu, D., Semedo, D., Popoola, D., Mataciunas, D., Nyaboke, D., Kumar, D. K., Glória-Silva, D., Tavares, D., Goyal, D., Lee, D., Anajemba, E. N., Grace, E. N., Mickel, E., Tutubalina, E., Herranen, E., Anand, E., Habumuremyi, E., Ajiboye, E. M., Yulianrifat, E. P., Adenuga, E., Rudnicka, E., Itiola, F. O., Butt, F. T., Thekkekara, F., Haouari, F., Tjiaranata, F. A., Laakom, F., Grasso, F., Orabona, F., Periti, F., Solomon, G. K., Ngo, G. N., Udhehdhe-oze, G., Martins, G., Challagolla, G. N. S. R., Son, G., Abdykadyrova, G., Einarsson, H., Hu, H., Saffari, H., Zaidi, H., Zhang, H., Shairah, H. A., Vuong, H., Kuulmets, H.-A., Bouamor, H., Yu, H., Debess, I. N., Deveci, İ. E., Hanif, I. A., Cho, I., Calvo, I., Vieira, I., Manzi, I., Daud, I., Itzhak, I., Iuliia, Alekseenko, Belashkin, I., Spada, I., Zhelyazkov, I., Brinton, J., Isbarov, J., Čibej, J., Čuhel, J., Kocoń, J., Krito, J. A., Purbey, J., Mickel, J., Za, J., Kunz, J., Jeong, J., Dávalos, J. T., Lee, J., Magalhães, J., Yi, J., Kim, J., Chataignon, J., Imperial, J. M., Thevakumar, J., Land, J., Jiang, J., Kim, J., Sirts, K., Kamesh, R., Kamesh, V., Tshinu, K. P., Kukk, K., Ponkshe, K., Huseynova, K., He, K., Buchanan, K., Sarveswaran, K., Zaman, K., Mrini, K., Kyars, K., Kruusmaa, K., Chouhan, K., Krishnakumar, L., Sánchez, L. C., Moscoso, L. P., Choshen, L., Sencan, L., Øvrelid, L., Alazraki, L., Ehimen-Ugbede, L., Thevakumar, L., Thavarasa, L., Malik, M., Keita, M. K., Jangid, M., Santis, M. D., García, M., Suppa, M., D'Ciofalo, M., Ojastu, M., Sikander, M., Narayan, M., Skandalis, M., Mehak, M., Bozkurt, M. İ., Workie, M. B., Velayuthan, M., Leventhal, M., Marcińczuk, M., Potočnjak, M., Shafiei, M., Sharma, M., Indoria, M., Habibi, M. R. S., Kolić, M., Galant, N., Permpredanun, N., Maugin, N., Corrêa, N. K., Ljubešić, N., Thomas, N., de Silva, N., Joshi, N., Ponkshe, N., Habash, N., Udeze, N. C., Thomas, N., Ligeti-Nagy, N., Coulibaly, N., Faustin, N., Buliaminu, O. K., Ogundepo, O., Fejiro, O. G., Funmilola, O. B., God'spraise, O., Samuel, O., Oluwaseun, O. D., Akindejoye, O., Popova, O., Snissarenko, O., Chiemezie, O. A., Kinay, O., Tursun, O., Moses, O. T., Joshua, O. O., Fiyinfoluwa, O., Gamallo, P., Fernández, P. R., Arora, P., Valente, P., Rupnik, P., Ekiugbo, P. O., Sahoo, P., Prokopidis, P., Niau-Puhipau, P., Yahya, Q., Mignone, R., Singhal, R., Kadiyala, R. M. R., Merx, R., Afolayan, R., Rajalakshmi, R., Ghosh, R., Oji, R., Solis, R. K., Guerra, R., Zawar, R., Bashir, S. N., Alzaabi, S., Sandeep, S., Batchu, S. P., Kantareddy, S., Pranida, S. Z., Buchanan, S., Rutunda, S., Land, S., Sulollari, S., Ali, S., Sapkota, S., Tautvaisas, S., Sen, S., Banerjee, S., Diarra, S., SenthilNathan, M., Lee, S., Shah, S., Venkitachalam, S., Djurabaeva, S., Ibejih, S., Dutta, S. S., Gupta, S., Suárez, S. P., Ahmadi, S., Sukumar, S., Song, S., Snegha, A., Sofianopoulos, S., Simon, S. E., Benčina, S., Gvasalia, S., More, S. K., Dragazis, S., Kaufhold, S. P., Suba, S., AlRashed, S., Ranathunga, S., Someya, T., Pungeršek, T. K., Haklay, T., Jibril, T., Aoyama, T., Abashidze, T., Cruz, T. J. D., Blevins, T., Nikas, T., Idoko, T. D., Do, T. M., Chubakov, T., Gargiani, T., Rathore, U., Johannesen, U., Ugwu, U. D., Putra, V. A., Kumar, V. B., Jeyarajalingam, V., Arzt, V., Nedumpozhimana, V., Ondrejova, V., Horbik, V., Kummitha, V. V. R., Dinić, V., Sewunetie, W. T., Wu, W., Zhao, X., Diarra, Y., Nikankin, Y., Mathur, Y., Chen, Y., Li, Y., Xavier, Y., Belinkov, Y., Abayomi, Y. I., Alyafeai, Z., Shan, Z., Tam, Z. R., Tang, Z., Nadova, Z., Abbasi, B., Biderman, S., Stap, D., Ataman, D., Schmidt, F., Gonen, H., Wang, J. & Adelani, D. I., 28 Oct 2025, 1 p.

    Research output: Working paper › Preprint

    File
    7 Downloads (Pure)
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