Professor Roumyana Slabakova
Chair of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Center for Linguistics, Language Education and Acquisition Research (CLLEAR)

Professor Roumyana Slabakova is the Chair of Applied Linguistics and Director of the Center for Linguistics, Language Education and Acquisition Research (CLLEAR) in Modern Languages and Linguistics at the University of Southampton.
I was born in Varna, Bulgaria and studied at the English-medium high school there. I completed my undergraduate education in English Philology at the Sofia University "Kliment Ohridski," specializing in linguistics and educational psychology. I taught English for academic purposes at the same university before I embarked on my postgraduate studies. My PhD degree was awarded by McGill University, Montreal, Canada, where I studied under the supervision of Professor Lydia White. My dissertation investigated the second language acquisition of aspect by Bulgarian native speakers learning English. I taught and conducted research at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA before I came to the University of Southampton.