Virtual Lecture Series

Leelo Keevallik is a professor in language and culture at Linköping University, Sweden. Her research focuses on interactional grammar and embodied interaction, with a particular interest in the relationship between language and the body. She is currently leading a project on non-lexical vocalizations, studying their use in dance teaching, parent-infant feeding, heavy physical work and at doctors’ appointments. Recently she edited a special issue on this topic, “Sounds on the Margins of Language” (with Richard Ogden), in the journal Research on Language and Social Interaction. 

Scott Kiesling is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a sociolinguist who works in both variation and discourse analytic methods, with a focus on gender/sexual identities, masculinities, class and place in Pittsburgh, ethnic identities in Australia, and theories of affect and stance(taking) in sociolinguistics. 

Claire Kramsch is Emerita Professor of German and Affilate Professor of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught courses in German and in Applied Linguistics, and where she was the founding director of the Berkeley Language Center. Her areas of interest are applied linguistics, second and foreign language learning and teaching, language and culture, bi- and multilingualism, and language and symbolic power. She has written extensively on language, discourse, and culture in applied linguistics. 

David Silverman is Professor Emeritus in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths College, London, Visiting Professor in the Management Department at King's College, University of London and the Business School, University of Technology, Sydney as well as Adjunct Professor at QUT, Faculty of Education. He has authored 15 books and 45 journal articles on qualitative research, ethnography and conversation analysis. He has supervised over 30 successful PhD students, three of whom are now full Professors.

Richard Ogden is Professor Linguistics at the University of York. His work explores the significance of phonetic detail in conversation. He has published on voice quality and turn-taking in Finnish; intonation; assessments; complaints; and most recently, clicks. He is author of a textbook, An Introduction to English Phonetics, which is mostly based on conversational data. He is currently working on swallowing in conversation.  

Neil Mercer is Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge, Director of Oracy Cambridge: the Centre for Effective Spoken Communication, a Life Fellow of the Cambridge college Hughes Hall and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He is a psychologist whose research has focused on the development of children’s spoken language and reasoning abilities and teachers’ role in that development. In 2019 he was given the Oevre Award by the European Association for Research into Learning and Instruction for outstanding contributions to educational research. His books include Words and Minds, Exploring Talk in School, Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking.

Anne Warfield Rawls is Professor of Sociology at Bentley University and Research Professor at the University of Siegen, Germany. Her research focuses on theories of constitutive practice in classical and contemporary social theory, and detailed ethnographic and ethnomethodological research, with particular application to issues of social justice, Race, and racism. Publications include, Tacit Racism (co-authored with Waverly Duck, University of Chicago 2020); Black Lives Matter: Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic Studies of Race and Systemic Racism in Everyday Interaction (co-authored with Kevin Whitehead and Waverly Duck 2020).

Adam Hodges is a sociocultural linguist and an adjunct professor of linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder. His interests focus on how language impacts contemporary social and political issues, such as the collective enactment of racism or the role language plays in politics. His recent book, When Words Trump Politics: Resisting a Hostile Regime of Language (2019, Stanford University Press), explores political discourse during the Trump era. His articles have appeared in American Anthropologist, Discourse & Society, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Language & Communication, and Language in Society; and he has contributed chapters to Language and Social Justice in Practice, and The Handbook of Language and Politics.