Lesley Milroy
Visiting Professor

Profile

Biography

Ann Lesley Milroy is a sociolinguist, and a professor emerita at the University of Michigan. She was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom in 1944. She studied and began her work in sociolinguistics in the UK. Lesley's work in sociolinguistics focuses on urban and rural dialectology, language ideology and standard.

Milroy's most famous work examines social networks and linguistic variation in Belfast in the 1970s.

She has written over seven books and fifteen journal articles, worked as an editorial board member for several research journals, and lectured around the world on her research. Milroy moved to the United States in 1994 where she worked as a professor and the chair of the department of linguistics at the University of Michigan, and retired in 2004. She has since done some sociolinguistic teaching and lecturing at Oxford University.

Selected honours

• University of Manchester
  Senior Simon research fellow (1992)
• University of Canterbury at Christchurch, New Zealand
  Erskine visiting fellow (1992)
• University of Michigan
  Dean's faculty award for teaching and research (1997)
• Fellowship for University Teachers
  National endowment for the humanities (2000)
• University of York
  Honorary visiting professor, Department of Language and Linguistic Science (2000)
• University of Michigan
  Hans Kurath collegiate chair of linguistics (2001)