معرفی
Diane Nelson is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, where she has been a faculty member since 1996. She currently serves as Director of Studies for Linguistics and Phonetics, overseeing undergraduate programs including the BA in Linguistics. She is actively involved in research, teaching, and academic leadership, with affiliations to Language@Leeds, the Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures and Ecosystems (CELCE), and the Leverhulme-funded Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Programme.
- PhD in Linguistics, University of Edinburgh, 1995
- BA in Ancient History, Columbia University, 1990
Her research spans theoretical and applied linguistics, with core interests in morphosyntax—especially grammatical case, event structure, and animacy—across Uralic and other lesser-studied languages. She has developed a strong interdisciplinary focus on language origins and evolution, linguistic endangerment, extinction, and reclamation, particularly through her collaborative work on the Kariri-Xocó language revival in Brazil. Her teaching includes the innovative module The Life Cycle of Languages, which explores the birth, diversity, and death of languages from evolutionary, ecological, and sociopolitical perspectives. She also co-teaches on minoritised languages and decolonial approaches in global environmental humanities.
The recent publications reflect a dual trajectory: one rooted in formal syntactic theory (e.g., Finnish case assignment), and another in sociolinguistic and anthropological inquiry into language loss, resilience, and justice. This interdisciplinary breadth connects linguistic structure with broader human and ecological crises, particularly the parallel declines of linguistic and biological diversity.
Professional Memberships:
- Linguistics Association of Great Britain
- Philological Society
- Global Council for Anthropological Linguistics
- International Ecolinguistics Association
Diane Nelson has supervised 13 PhD students to completion and currently co-supervises three others. She has served as External Examiner for Linguistics programs at multiple UK universities and contributed to national benchmarking through the QAT Subject Benchmarking review panels. She has held roles as Postgraduate Research Tutor, Promotions Advisor, and MA Programmes Manager. Her grant involvement includes AHRC-funded Language Acts and Worldmaking and the Leverhulme Extinction Studies DTP. She also engages in public scholarship through BBC radio, art collaborations, film screenings, and public talks on language extinction.
She is a founding member of the Centre for Endangered Languages, Cultures and Ecosystems (CELCE) and a steering group member of Language@Leeds and the Embracing Linguistic Diversity satellite. Her current research includes a monograph on the natural history of language and ongoing work on animacy in cognition and grammar.
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