About Elisabeth Barakos

I am sociolinguist, discourse analyst and trained English and Spanish language teacher dedicated to research on multilingualism and language policy in education and the world of work, with over 15 years of research, teaching and administrative experience across universities in the UK, Germany and Austria. I believe in critically engaging with the social role of language, what people think about language and what they do with it. For me, language is a point for articulating and living out ideologies, historical power relations between speakers as well as inequalities. Language is always political.

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I am currently Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at Vienna University, Austria. Previously, I held positions as Guest Professor in English Linguistics at Vienna University, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hamburg, Germany,  Lecturer / Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics at Aston University, Birmingham, UK, and research assistant at Vienna University of Economics and Business.

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I am also the co-founder and co-chair of the BAAL (British Association for Applied Linguistics) Special Interest Group on Language Policy. Feel free to join the group and debate.