Kjersti Faldet Listhaug

Kjersti Faldet Listhaug is an Associate Professor and currently serves as Vice Dean of Education at the Faculty of Humanities, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). She works in the Department of Language and Literature and leads the Language Policy Committee at NTNU. Her academic career spans over two decades at NTNU, where she has held various administrative positions including Head of Study programmes (BA and MA) in Foreign Languages (2019-2021).

Her research interests focus on language acquisition, particularly second and third language acquisition, acquisition of syntax and vocabulary, transfer and cross-linguistic influence, multilingualism, French linguistics, the mental lexicon, language and perception, and spatial language. She employs both explicit and implicit language learning approaches in her research and has developed theoretical models for third language acquisition.

Her recent publications show a strong emphasis on cross-linguistic influence in multilingual acquisition, particularly examining verb placement patterns across different language combinations (L2 English and L3 French/German). Her work frequently investigates how previously acquired languages influence the acquisition of new languages, with a special focus on Nordic language contexts. She has published extensively in journals like Nordic Journal of Linguistics, Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, and Synergies Pays Scandinaves.

Listhaug actively supervises bachelor's and master's theses within French syntax and second- and third-language acquisition, emphasizing the inclusion of students in ongoing research projects. She currently supervises doctoral candidates as part of the CLIMA research project. Her grant portfolio includes funding from The Research Council of Norway for the CLIMA project, which addresses research gaps concerning cross-linguistic influence in multilingual acquisition.

She is actively involved in several research groups including ForMAAL (Formal Models in Applied Linguistics), FANT (Research Group for Second and Third Languages), VOCLEX (Vocabulary and the Multilingual Mental Lexicon), and Bilingualism Matters (Trondheim branch). Her work bridges theoretical linguistics with practical language education policy, as evidenced by her national advocacy for foreign language education in Norway.