Julie McBrien

Dr. Julie McBrien is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the AISSR Research Program Group Globalizing Culture. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from King's College, University of Cambridge (2010-2014), and conducted postdoctoral research at Utrecht University (2020-2021). Her research spans sociolinguistics, secularism studies, and Central Asian anthropology. Key areas include language policy in Dutch universities, the evolution of religious practices in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, and the sociolinguistic dynamics of English in multilingual contexts.

Her monograph English in the Netherlands: Functions, Forms and Attitudes (2016) explores Dutch English as a distinct variety, while her ethnographic work From Belonging to Belief (2017) examines secularism and Islamic practices in Kyrgyzstan. She is co-coordinator of the ERC-funded project Problematizing Muslim Marriages and contributes to public discourse through media interviews and op-eds on language policy and academic culture.

Research interests include language ideologies, multilingualism, corpus linguistics, and the interplay between state secularism and religious identity. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges anthropology, linguistics, and critical theory, with recent work focusing on EMI (English-Medium Instruction) policies and their sociocultural implications in Dutch higher education.