Paul Kerswill

Paul Kerswill is an Affiliated Professor at Queen Mary University of London and Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of York. His research focuses on language variation and change, emphasizing phonetic, grammatical, and discourse variation. He joined Queen Mary in 2023 to work on the Generations of London English project, studying urban dialect formation and sociolinguistic dynamics. His work spans dialectology, sociolinguistics in West Africa, and historical language change during the Industrial Revolution.

Research Projects:
- Communicating a global pandemic in a multilingual space: Language choice and language use in COVID-19 campaigns in Ghana (British Academy-funded, 2020–2023)
- Studies on dialect contact in urban settings and new dialect formation processes

Awards:
- Elected Fellow of the British Academy (2017)
- Visiting Professorship at Sheffield Hallam University’s Humanities Research Centre (2015)

Key Contributions: Published widely on sociolinguistic phenomena, including phonetic variation in England, language choice in conflict zones, and historical dialect evolution. Active in international collaborations and interdisciplinary research on language and identity.