Becky Winstanley
Key information
- Department
- Department of Linguistics
- Qualifications
- BA, MA, MPhil (London)
- Email address
- 677372@soas.ac.uk
- Thesis title
- Multilingualism in Tower Hamlets: Sylheti practices, places, connections and ideologies.
- Internal Supervisors
- Professor Julia Sallabank
Biography
I have spent most of my professional career working as an English language (ESOL) teacher and teacher trainer in east London and my academic interest in sociolinguistics is very much connected to this experience. The many years of working with and getting to know my (mainly Bangladeshi) students, their languages and their families have given me a very grounded interest in language and migration and language in diasporic communities, as well as a particular interest in Bangladesh and its languages. My MA dissertation (Goldsmiths, Sociocultural Linguistics 2015) focused on the language ideologies of newly arrived Bangladeshi migrants from Italy and explored how these ideologies impacted on their migration choices.
I have been Visiting Research Associate at Kings College London since 2017 and I have collaborated on a number of classroom research projects. These have focussed on developing participatory ESOL pedagogy in the UK and on increasing the influence of sociolinguistics on ESOL practice.
I began my PhD in 2019 on a 4 year Collaborative Doctoral Award funded by CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership and am working closely with the Osmani Trust in Tower Hamlets as non-academic partner in the research.
Research interests
- Multilingualism
- Language and migration
- Language ideologies
- Repertoire approaches
Contact Becky
- Social media