Petros Karatsareas | University of Westminster (original) (raw)

I am a Reader in Multilingualism and Language Contact, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and the Course Leader for the English Language and Linguistics MA and the English Language and Literature MA. I hold a Ptychion (equivalent to a BA Hons) in Greek Philology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2006), an M.Phil. in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge (2007), and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge (2011).

Currently, I serve as Co-Director of the London branch of the Bilingualism Matters network. Previously, I was Co-Convenor of the Special Interest Group on Multilingualism within the British Association for Applied Linguistics, Co-Director of the Cyprus Centre at Westminster, and a Trustee of the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education.

I specialise in the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, focusing on language practices and ideologies within contexts of migration and transnational mobility, particularly in the UK and primarily in London. My research explores ideologies, attitudes, and practices surrounding non-standardised, minoritised, and hierarchised linguistic resources and repertoires. Working on·with·for with minoritised groups of migrant origin, I investigate the role of language in experiences of discrimination and creating difference. I am also interested in community language education in diasporic contexts and how various educational initiatives shape language practices and ideologies. My research to date has been ethnographically oriented, examining diverse Greek-speaking communities in London, including people from Albania, Cyprus, and Greece, who have migrated to the UK under varying social and historical conditions.

In the past, I specialised in the study of contact-induced language change. In my Ph.D. dissertation, I examined diachronic change in the morphosyntax of inner Asia Minor Greek Greek (Cappadocian, Pontic, Pharasiot, Silliot). I carried out research on the diachronic development of gender agreement; the restructuring and simplification of noun inflection; the morphological realisation of direct objects; the cyclical development of the adpositional system; and, the synchronic status of determiner spreading in the language.

My research has been supported by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, including through through a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (2013), a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award (2017), and a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research Grant (2017). I have also received flexible funding from the ‘Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community’ AHRC-funded OWRI programme, the Policy Support Fund and the Participatory Research Fund of Research England, and the Additional QR and Additional RCIF Grant Allocations of UKRI.

In 2008, I was awarded the R. H. Robins Prize of the Philological Society for the best submission to the Transactions of the Philological Society by a UK graduate student.

I have published findings of my research in leading journals including the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, the International Journal of Bilingualism, the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Languages, Society & Policy, Diachronica, Language Sciences, the Journal of Greek Linguistics, Cahiers du Centre d’ Études Chypriotes; the Journal of Historical Linguistics and STUF – Language Typology and Universals as well as in edited volumes published by Cambridge University Press, including in the third edition of “Language in Britain and Ireland”, John Benjamins, Brill and Multilingual Matters, and entries in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, the Encyclopedia of Greek Language and Linguistics Online, and the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of World Englishes.

My co-edited volume “Greek in Minoritized Contexts: Identities, Authenticities, and Institutions” (with Matthew John Hadodo and Elena Ioannidou) was published in Routledge’s Critical Studies of Multilingualism series in 2024.

I have forthcoming journal articles in Language, Culture and Society and Language Sciences, a chapter in a UCL Press volume, and a monograph on Greek complementary schools in the UK co-authored with Alexandra Georgiou, which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

I am actively engaged in initiatives that promote the value of multilingualism for multilingual individuals, diasporic communities, and society at large.
Supervisors: Bert Vaux
Address: School of Humanities
University of Westminster
309 Regent Street
London W1B 2HW
United Kingdom

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