Jeanette Sakel

Professor Jeanette Sakel is a Professor of Language and Linguistics at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), where she has been employed since 2007. She currently serves within the Faculty of Arts, Creative Industries, and Education (ACE), bringing extensive expertise in linguistic fieldwork, language contact phenomena, and Amazonian languages. Between 2017-2023, she held the leadership position of Director of Student Experience, overseeing key learning, teaching, and quality processes across the faculty.

Her educational background includes a PhD in Linguistics (2003) from the University of Nijmegen & Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, an MA in Linguistics (1999) from Aarhus University, and a BA in Linguistics and Finnish (1998) from the same institution.

Professor Sakel's research focuses on the intersection of language contact, typology, and linguistic fieldwork, with particular emphasis on Amazonian languages like Mosetén and Pirahã. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in Bolivia on Mosetén, in Brazil on Pirahã, and in Greenland on Kalaallisut. Her work explores grammatical contact phenomena, syntactic complexity, and the mechanisms of language transfer between bilingual communities. She is particularly interested in how indigenous languages interact with dominant languages like Spanish and Portuguese, documenting structural changes and borrowing patterns.

Her publication record demonstrates consistent focus on language contact phenomena across Amazonian languages, with recent work examining historical sources of grammatical borrowing in Mosetén (2024) and comparative studies of Chimane-Mosetén (2023). Earlier works established foundational research on Pirahã-Portuguese contact and Mosetén-Spanish integration. Her publications span descriptive grammar, theoretical linguistics, language acquisition, and practical fieldwork methodologies.

Her recognition as a National Teaching Fellow highlights her significant contributions to education. She has authored two influential textbooks: 'Study Skills for Linguistics' (2015) and 'Linguistic Fieldwork' (2012), co-authored with Dan Everett. She also maintains an educational YouTube channel explaining basic grammatical terminology.

Professor Sakel has supervised eight PhD students and actively welcomes new doctoral candidates working on minority languages, typology, language contact, second language acquisition, language teaching, Chinese and Sinitic languages, and Amazonian languages. Her leadership experience includes chairing validation panels, developing policies, and establishing academic partnerships. She is an accomplished polyglot who has worked on more than 50 languages worldwide and is currently learning Mandarin Chinese.