James Wilson

James Wilson is an Associate Professor in Russian and Language Studies at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds. He holds a BA, MA, and PhD in Russian with Czech from the University of Sheffield and a CELTA from International House, Prague. His career spans teaching and research in Czech and Russian languages, with a focus on variationist sociolinguistics, dialectology, and corpus-based pedagogy.

• 2010–2011: Research Fellow on AHRC-funded IntelliText project at Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds
• 2009–present: Teaching at University of Leeds

Wilson’s research examines language variation in Czech, particularly Standard vs. Common Czech in Bohemia and Moravia, dialect contact, and second dialect acquisition. He has developed corpus-based methodologies for Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) and ESP teaching. His recent publications analyze sociolinguistic variation in Czech loanwords, salience in dialect acquisition, and collaborative vocabulary learning using corpora.

He has supervised PhD researcher Amani Alonayzan and organized HEA-funded workshops on bespoke language training and corpus applications. Wilson has also contributed to medical translation and dictionary entries on accommodation theory and quantitative sociolinguistics.