Lauren Hall-Lew

Lauren Hall-Lew is a Professor and Personal Chair of Sociolinguistics at the University of Edinburgh's School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences. She holds a BA from the University of Arizona (2002) and MA/PhD from Stanford University (2009). Her research focuses on phonetics, social meaning, language change, and sociopolitical identity. She has pioneered projects like the Lothian Diary Project, studying linguistic impact of the pandemic, and analyzed Scottish political speech, tourist language attitudes, and ethnicity-linked variation in San Francisco.

Teaching contributions include courses on sociophonetics and language variation/change, earning her EUSA Teaching Award (2013). She has supervised over a dozen PhD students and is involved in EDI initiatives, including founding the Staff BAME Network Mentoring Programme (2019-2021), recognized via CAHSS Award and Principal's Medal nominations.

Active in grant work, she leads projects on homelessness and linguistic variation (British Academy-funded), Scottish tour guide discourse, and political identity in phonetics. Awards include teaching accolades and EDI recognition. Her publications span sociolinguistic theory, phonetic analysis, and applied linguistic methods.