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Centre for Linguistics, Language Education and Acquisition Research

Our people

Learn about our academic experts, from their research interests to their contact details.

Emeritus Professor Patrick Stevenson PhD

Research interests

  • German sociolinguistics
  • Multilingualism
  • The politics of language

Emeritus Professor Richard Kiely

Research interests

  • Classroom practice, with a focus on the teacher
  • Teacher learning, as the development of professional identity and expertise
  • Teacher research, particularly its role in professional learning and development

Email: r.n.kiely@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF

Emeritus Professor Rosamond Mitchell FAcSS

Research interests

  • Second language acquisition
  • Language in education
  • Student mobility and study abroad

Professor Roumyana Slabakova

Chair in Applied Linguistics

Research interests

  • Roumyana Slabakova's research is grounded in generative linguistic theory and explores the second language (L2) acquisition process. Her theoretical focus is the acquisition of grammatical structure and its interaction with meaning. She uses online and offline psycholinguistic methodologies to investigate the following theoretical issues: 
  • What is the linguistic nature of the bilingual and multilingual grammar?Are there some properties of language (e.g. words, sounds, sentence structure) that are easier to acquire than others (e.g. functional morphemes, grammatical meanings)? Are there are some properties, such as pragmatic universals, that will come for free in the grammar of the learner?Can lexical, phrasal and sentence meaning be acquired in the L2? How does the interface between form and meaning affect the L2 acquisition of meaning?What is the effect of the native language in the acquisition of a second language? What are the effects of the native and the second language in the acquisition of a third language?How does linguistic and processing complexity affect knowledge of meaning in the L2? How do children acquiring their native language and adult L2 learners compare in this respect?

Email: r.slabakova@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF

Dr Rugang Lu

Senior Teaching Fellow

Research interests

  • Multimodal discourse analysis
  • Semiological approach to culture studies
  • Intercultural communication and language teaching

Accepting applications from PhD students

Email: r.lu@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF

Dr Sarah Rule

Principal Teaching Fellow

Email: s.j.rule@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF

Dr Simin Sasani

Teaching Fell in Applied Linguistics/ELT

Research interests

  • Intercultural Communicative Competence in ELT
  • Sociolinguistics of English as a global language
  • Intercultural pragmatics in the global Englishes context

Accepting applications from PhD students

Email: s.sasani@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF

Mr Sirawit Apairach

Research interests

  • Critical applied linguistics
  • Systemic functional linguistics
  • Academic literacies

Email: s.apairach@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF

Dr Sonia Moran Panero

Lecturer B

Research interests

  • English as a global lingua franca (ELF)
  • Sociolinguistics, identity and semiotics in an era of globalisation
  • Translanguaging and transcultural communication

Accepting applications from PhD students

Email: s.moran-panero@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF

Professor Vicky Wright

Professorial Fellow-Education

Research interests

  • Learner Autonomy
  • Teacher Autonomy
  • Computer Assisted Language Learning / Language Learning and Innovation

Accepting applications from PhD students

Email: v.m.wright@soton.ac.uk

Address: B65, Avenue Campus, Highfield Road, SO17 1BF