New Head of Department

Posted on 24 January 2022

The Department of Language and Linguistic Science is delighted to welcome Professor Monika S. Schmid as our new Head of Department.

Monika received her PhD in English Linguistics from the University of Duesseldorf, Germany, in 2000, for a PhD thesis on first language attrition among German-Jewish refugees in the UK and the US. Her thesis was published with John Benjamins Publishing Co. in 2002 under the title First Language Attrition, Use and Maintenance: The case of German Jews in Anglophone countries. She subsequently held positions as lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, as Senior Lecturer and Professor of English Language at the University of Groningen and as Professor of Linguistics at the University of Essex (2013-2021), where she was also Head of Department (2018-2021).

Monika’s research interests focus on bilingual development and, in particular, on change, deterioration and stability in the native language of migrants who become dominant in the language of the environment (this process is called first language attrition). Her recent work focuses on the impact of personal factors such as the age at migration and working memory capacities on these processes. Together with Barbara Kopke of the University of Toulouse she has organised a series of conferences and conference panels and edited a number of books and special issues of journals on this topic. She has been the PI on a number of projects funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG), the Dutch Organisation for Research (NWO) and the Economic and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC).

To read more about Prof. Schmid’s research:

https://languageattrition.org

Language Attrition Facebook page

I am really excited to be working in such an excellent department and with colleagues who are world-renowned experts in so many fields. I’m hoping to extend my research to studying the deterioration of foreign languages, and look forward to working with the colleagues in the language section on what can be done to prevent this, and how best to support people who want to relearn a language that they may have (partly) forgotten. I hope that we can make York the go-to place for any question concerned with language loss! - Prof. Monika S. Schmid, Department of Language and Linguistic Science