University of Salford

Faculty Member, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences

Professor and Head of School

College of Arts and Social Sciences

About

I read modern languages (French and German) at the University of Bradford (UK) from 1984 to 1988 (spending 1986 in France as an English teacher and in Germany as a translator) and graduated with first-class combined honours, the German politics prize, and an honorary life membership of the students' union. After a short time working as a translator and interpreter in France, I returned to the UK in 1989 for a British Academy-funded Masters degree in linguistics at the University of York. From York I moved in 1990 to a temporary one-year junior lecturing position in French at the University of Salford. In 1991 I was offered further British Academy funding to return to York for full-time doctoral research, but chose instead to accept an offer to remain at Salford, where, two decades and one (part-time) doctorate later, and after brief periods in visiting positions at the Institut supérieur de traducteurs et interprètes (ISTI) in Brussels and at the Université de Toulouse-le Mirail, I remain. After five years as Head of the School of Languages (2006-2011) I am now Professor of French Language & Linguistics and Head of the School of Humanities, Languages & Social Sciences.

My academic teaching and research interests lie in French language and linguistics, and full details of my activities and achievements are set out in my CV, available for download from this profile. In brief I have taught linguistics at Salford, as well as at the Universities of Manchester, York and Toulouse-le Mirail, and various aspects of French language and translation and interpreting at Salford, the Institut Supérieur de Traducteurs et Interprètes (Brussles) and Toulouse-le Mirail. I have published a number of single- and joint-authored books, as well as chapters in books, edited collections, entries in encyclopaedias, and articles and book reviews in refereed journals. Since 2008 I have surveyed academic publications in French language and linguistics for "The year's work in modern language studies" (Modern Humanities Research Association). Several of my publications (or, in some cases, pre-publication versions) are available for download from this profile.

Outside Salford I am editor of the Transactions of the Philological Society, a peer-reviewed journal published for the Society by Wiley-Blackwell, and a member of the advisory editorial board of the Journal of French Language Studies, a peer-reviewed journal published on behalf of the Association for French Language Studies by Cambridge University Press. I am also currently a member of the linguistics team within the EU-funded HUMART project (sectoral qualifications framework for the humanities and the applied and fine arts).

Previously I was chair of the linguistics specialist advisory group of the UK Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, chair of the Linguistics Strategy Group, treasurer of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB) and of the University Council of Modern Languages, and member of the LAGB education committee. I was also the founding chair of the University Council of General and Applied Linguistics.

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