Stephen Lucek

Dr. Stephen Lucek is an Assistant Professor in Linguistics at University College Dublin, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. He holds a PhD from Trinity College Dublin and a Professional Certificate in University Teaching & Learning from UCD. His research focuses on linguistic variation and multilingualism in Ireland, particularly in educational contexts.

• PhD in Linguistics, Trinity College Dublin
• Professional Certificate in University Teaching & Learning, University College Dublin

Stephen's research interests include sociolinguistics, Irish English, multilingualism, register variation, polydialectalism, and language ideologies. He employs cognitive and perceptual approaches, especially Conceptual Metaphor Theory and perceptual dialectology, to study how language reflects identity and social structure. His work often examines the impact of standard language ideology and accent discrimination in Irish secondary schools.

The recent publications reflect a strong trend in raciolinguistics, language policy, and cognitive linguistics. His work analyzes public discourse on Twitter, media representations of Irish dialects, and presidential rhetoric, showing a broad methodological range from corpus analysis to qualitative interviews.

Stephen has been a co-editor of Teanga: The Journal of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, contributing to the advancement of applied linguistics in Ireland. He has secured competitive research grants, including from the Irish Research Council, to study adolescents' language use and discrimination in schools.

He actively supervises MA and PhD students and teaches modules such as Multilingualism, World Englishes, and Research Skills. He also coordinates several key courses and has been involved in public engagement through media appearances on topics like accentism, AI in grading, and language change among youth.

Stephen has been involved in significant interdisciplinary collaborations, including with Vicky Garnett on dialect mapping and Garrett Phelan on the Free Thought FM art project, which explored class inequality and access to education in Dublin.