Professor Devyani Sharma's Inaugural Lecture

Professor Devyani Sharma will give her inaugural lecture as Professor of Language and Communication on 12 February at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. More details to follow soon.

Devyani Sharma FBA is Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Oxford. Her research examines how new accents and dialects develop, migration and inter-ethnic contact, generational change in language and social systems, speech style, attitudes, and bilingualism. She is the author of From Deficit to Dialect: The Evolution of English in India and Singapore, and her co-edited works include Research Methods in Linguistics, The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes, English in the Indian Diaspora.

She is currently leading a project on variation and change in London English across ages and generations (https://generationsoflondonenglish.org/). She co-led the only nationwide investigation of attitudes to accent and workplace bias in the UK (accentbiasbritain.org). She was commissioned by the Sutton Trust to co-author a report on linguistic barriers to social mobility with national recommendations and she engages widely with media and external stakeholders.