Paul Kerswill: Curriculum vitae
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Employment |
2004- Professor, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University
1998-2004 Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Reading University
1986-1998 Lecturer in Linguistics, Reading University
1985-6 Research Assistant and Grantholder on ESRC project on sociophonetics, Cambridge University
1983 (Jan-Dec) Research Assistant, Dept. of English Language, Durham University (Sociolinguistic/dialectological study of local schoolchildren)
Education |
Cambridge University 1980-85 (PhD in Linguistics)
Cambridge University 1979-80 (MPhil in Linguistics)
Bergen University 1978-9 (Holder of Norwegian Government Scholarship)
Cambridge University 1975-8 (BA in Modern and Medieval Languages)
Berkhamsted School 1967-74
Research Grants |
Each of these projects has been funded by the Economic & Social Research Council and have involved the appointment of a full-time Research Assistant for three years. For all except the second project, the proposals and final reports were mainly or entirely my responsibility.
(1) July 1985-June 1988 (ESRC; held jointly with Francis Nolan and Stephen Levinson, Cambridge): A sociophonetic study of connected speech processes in Cambridge English (ref. C00232227). Amount awarded: £43,440
(2) July 1988-June 1991 (ESRC; held jointly with Francis Nolan and Susan Wright, Cambridge): The interaction of sociophonetic features and connected speech processes (ref. R000231056). Amount awarded: £59,530
(3) September 1990-February 1994 (ESRC; sole grantholder, Dept. of Linguistic Science, Reading): A new dialect in a new city : children's and adults' speech in Milton Keynes (ref. R000232376). Amount awarded: £51,995. Grade achieved: Outstanding
(4) September 1995-May 1999 (ESRC; held jointly with Dr Ann Williams (Reading) and Professor Jenny Cheshire (Queen Mary & Westfield College)): The role of adolescents in dialect levelling (ref. R000236180). This collaborative project, on which I was the principal investigator, builds directly on (3), above, and a previous ESRC project by Cheshire and Edwards, A survey of British dialect grammar , 1986-88, ref. C00232264. Amount awarded: £144,178. Grade achieved: Outstanding. Download the final report.
(5) October 2004-September 2007 (ESRC, Principal Investigator. Grant held jointly with Professor Jenny Cheshire (Queen Mary, University of London)): Linguistic innovators: the English of adolescents in London (ref. RES 000 23 0680). Amount awarded: £278,996 .
Publications |
See the full list.
Other activities |
Keynote speaker
August 2005: Invited discussant at meeting to prepare case for Centre of Excellence in Society and Language, University of Bergen, Norway. (fully paid)
March 2005: Invited speaker at launch of Norwegian social dialectology project 'Utviklingsprosessar i urbane språkmiljø', Agder College, Kristiansand, Norway . (fully paid)
September 2004: Keynote speaker at New Zealand Language and Society Conference, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand. (part paid)
August 2002: 7th Nordic Conference on Dialectology, Voss, Norway. (fully paid)
Invited guest lectures - overseas and UK
Since 1986, I have been an invited, fully or partly paid guest speaker at 23 research meetings overseas and 18 research meetings in the UK.
Refereed conference papers
I have given 38 papers at conferences at which papers were refereed.
2001 RAE
In the 2001 RAE, my research (Variationist Sociolinguistics) was flagged as being of international standing.
Conference organisation
Principal organiser:
• Sixth UK Language Variation and Change Conference (September 2007)
• Workshop on Northern Englishes (31 March- 1 April 2006 )
• Final Open Conference of the ESF network on Dialect Convergence and Dialect Divergence (September 1998)
• First UK Language Variation and Change Conference (September 1997)
• Sociolinguistics Symposium 9 (April 1992)
• In July 2004 I was co-organiser, with PhD students Arfaan Khan and Julia Sallabank, of a BAAL/CUP seminar on Language and Identity at Reading University (see http://www.rdg.ac.uk/slals/identity_seminar/index.htm)
Participation in European Science Foundation Network
In 1994-1998 I was on the organising committee of the European Science Foundation Network 'Convergence and Divergence of Dialects in a Changing Europe', co-ordinated by Prof. Peter Auer (then at Hamburg) and Prof. Frans Hinskens (then at Leipzig). I attended the first three meetings in Hamburg , Nijmegen and Ghent and presented a paper at the fourth in Heidelberg . I taught on a language variation Summer School in Málaga in 1998. I also organised the final open conference in Reading in September 1998.
The legacy of the ESF Network is the establishment of a new conference series, the International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE), on whose permanent committee I am. ICLaVE has now been held in Barcelona and Uppsala, and was held in Amsterdam in June 2005. It will be held at the University of Cyprus in 2007.
Lectures given by invitation at Doctoral level since 2001
September 2003: 4 lectures on social dialectology at Summer School on 'Sociolinguistic approaches to language change', University of Berne.
April 2003: 2 lectures on social dialectology at North West Centre for Linguistics Spring Research Training Programme, Universities of Salford and Manchester.
June 2002: 5 seminars on dialect contact and koineisation to PhD students, University of Leipzig.
Lectures given by invitation at Undergraduate and Masters level since 2001
September-October 2004: 28 lectures on Sociolinguistics, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
January 2004: 8 lectures on Sociolinguistics, University of Oxford.
April 2002: 2 lectures on English as an International Language to undergraduates, plus one staff seminar, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra. (no expenses paid)
April 2001: 5 lectures on English dialectology and sociolinguistics at the Cognitive Science Programme, University of Szeged, Hungary. (Soros Foundation programme)
ESRC and AHRB involvement
In 2000, I was a member of the panel which wrote the ESRC's new Postgraduate Training Guidelines on Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, chaired by Richard Coates (Sussex).
In 2003, I was a member of the ESRC's Board of Examiners for Linguistics .
External examining since 2001
2006-9: MA Honours in English Language, University of Aberdeen
2003-6: BA in English Language and Linguistics, University of Newcastle
1999-2002: BA in Linguistics, Queen Mary & Westfield College, London
1998-2001: Part 1B of the Modern Languages Tripos, University of Cambridge
1998-2001: BA in English, University of Hong Kong
PhD examining
PhD theses from Sheffield, London, Exeter, Bergen, Oslo and Reading
Editorial board
1995- Member of editorial board of Journal of Sociolinguistics (Blackwell)
Community involvement
a Continuing education
'Accents and dialects': 2 hour lecture to 6th form teachers at annual INSET week on English Language organised by Jane Setter in Reading 's School of Linguistics
b Lectures to 6th formers
2006 (31 Jan): Lecture to 6 th formers attending residential course on English Language: Contemporary Dialect Change (National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth, Villiers Park Educational Trust, Foxton, nr. Cambridge)
2005: 'Birth and death of dialect' (Lecture to AS and A level students at St Edward's College, Liverpool)
2003: 'Birth and death of dialect' (Lecture to 600 students attending AS and A level English Language Conference, London, run by SEC Ltd., Catfield, Norfolk)
2003: 'Changing English' (Lecture to 70 6 th formers at Farnborough College)
2001: 'Dialect in Britain : geography, time, social class and ethnicity'. (AS and A level English Language Conferences in London and Salford, run by SEC Ltd., Catfield, Norfolk)
c Radio and television interviews since 2001
August 2005: appeared on quiz show on local accents for BBC Radio Berkshire as part of the BBC's Voices project
May 2004: interviewed for Radio 4's Word of Mouth by Michael Rosen (broadcast in May)
April 2004: interviewed on Today programme in connection with the Sociolinguistics Symposium held in Newcastle
February 2003: interviewed for a 20-minute programme on the Milton Keynes accent for BBC1's Inside Out series (screened in March)
July 2003: interviewed for Radio 4's You and Yours (broadcast in August)
d Lectures to non-academic groups since 2001
October 2005: Lecture to the Cambridge Society, Cumbria and Lancashire branches
2004: Lecture to the National Trust, Oxford branch