Chiara Ciarlo

Dr Chiara Ciarlo is a Lecturer in the Department of Languages and Cultures at the University of Reading, where she serves as Italian Language Coordinator, Year Abroad Coordinator, Italian Outreach Officer, and Director of Academic Tutoring for the Year Abroad. She teaches Italian language from ab-initio to advanced levels and delivers linguistics modules in both the Department of Languages and Cultures and the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics.

Her educational background includes a BA in Foreign Languages and Literatures from the University of Genoa (2002), an MA in Contemporary English Language and Linguistics from the University of Reading (2004), and a PhD in Linguistics from Queen Mary, University of London (2010). She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2019).

Her primary research interests lie in First and Second Language Acquisition, particularly the acquisition of syntactic agreement by L1 and L2 speakers. She explores how theoretical linguistics can inform language pedagogy, focusing on ab-initio teaching methods, translation in language learning, and curriculum development. Her linguistic research extends to variationist sociolinguistics and Italian dialectology, especially subject clitic variation in Northern Italian dialects like Ligurian.

The available publication, her 2010 PhD work, centers on subject clitic variation in Ligurian, applying minimalist syntactic theory to explain systematic variation rather than free alternation. The keywords span linguistics, syntax, dialectology, and phonology, with subfields including phi-feature analysis, agreement, and dialectal variation.

• Celebrating Success Award, Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Reading, 2025
• Celebrating Success Award, Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Reading, 2024
• Rewarding Excellence Award – Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Reading, 2023
• Rewarding Excellence Award – Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Reading, 2019
• Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence Award (group award for the Italian Section), Reading University Students’ Union Excellence Award, University of Reading, 2016
• Rewarding Excellence Award – School of Literature and Languages, University of Reading, 2014
• Rewarding Excellence Award – Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Reading, 2013
• Teaching and Learning Development Fund (TLDF) – CDoTL, University of Reading, 2012 (with Dr Federico Faloppa)
• Partnerships in Learning and Teaching (PLanT) Project Funding, University of Reading, 2022

Dr Ciarlo supervises undergraduate projects, extended essays, and MA dissertations in Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, and Language Learning and Teaching. She has led curriculum development initiatives and secured internal grants to enhance the Year Abroad experience and integrate linguistics into modern language teaching. She is an active member of the Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) and the Association of University Language Communities in the UK and Ireland (AULC), and has organized key academic events such as the First Conference of Italian Linguistics in the UK (2010) and the Linguistics in/for Modern Languages Workshop (2013).

Her work bridges theoretical linguistics and practical pedagogy, contributing significantly to language teaching excellence and student support at the University of Reading.