Norma Schifano

Norma Schifano is an Associate Professor in Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham, specializing in the comparative morphosyntax of Spanish and Romance languages. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (2011-2015), supported by a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and previously worked on a Leverhulme-funded project on Italo-Greek varieties (2015-2019). Her research focuses on documenting endangered languages like Italo-Greek, exploring language contact in southern Italy, and advancing syntactic cartography theory.

• Affiliations: University of Birmingham (2019–present), University of Cambridge (Research Associate 2015–2019)
• Education: PhD (Cambridge), MA (Ca’ Foscari, Venice), BA (Ca’ Foscari, Venice)

Her research interests include:

• Microvariation in Romance languages
• Syntax of non-standard varieties
• Language documentation
• Language contact phenomena

Recent work includes a BA/Leverhulme grant investigating Latin American Spanish in London and co-founding the Linguistics in MFL A-level project, promoting linguistics integration in UK secondary education. She has received awards including the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2018).

Teaching spans general and Romance linguistics, with supervision across UK universities. She co-edited a Special Issue on Romance grammars and contributes to Isogloss and Probus.