Dr Urszula Clark

I am currently  Reader in English within the School of Languages and Social Sciences (LSS). I am Director of The West Midlands English: Speech and Society project. http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lss/research/centres-institutes/interland/speech-society/

I am also co- director of Aston’s Research Centre for Interdisciplinary research in Language and Diversity (InterLAND), an initiative that brings together colleagues in applied linguistics, social sciences and business studies. http://www1.aston.ac.uk/lss/research/centres-institutes/interland/about/

My main areas of research interests are: English pedagogy; variationist sociolinguistics and discourse analysis.

I  welcome enquiries from PhD-qualified researchers from all countries outside the UK wishing to apply for a Marie Curie Fellowship to come to work with us at Aston; the next call opens on 14th March with a deadline of 14th August 2013. There are two Fellowship Schemes available:

• One for early- to mid-career researchers of any nationality currently working in Europe (Intra-European fellowship, IEF); 
• One for researchers at mid-career plus working in any country outside of Europe (International Incoming Fellowship, IIF).

Topics considered: variationist sociolinguistics; discourse analysis and educational linguistics.  

Please contact me for further details.

Qualifications

• BA in Philosophy and English, University of York, 1978
• PGCE English and Drama, University of Leeds, 1979
• PhD in Arts Education, University of Warwick,  1997

Teaching

• PhD supervision in discourse analysis, English Language pedagogy, Language and Identity
• Masters modules in grammar and literary linguistics
• Undergraduate modules in Variations of English, Research Methods and Critical Discourse Analysis

Employment

• 2008 – date: Reader in English, School of Languages and Social Sciences,  Aston University.
  
• 2008 -  2011: Associate Dean, Postgraduate Taught programmes,  School of Languages and Social Sciences,  Aston University.
  
• 2005 – 2008: Senior Lecturer in English/Head of English Subject Group, School of Languages and Social Sciences,  Aston University.
  
• 1998-2005: Principal Lecturer in English/Head of English Subject Group, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, University of Wolverhampton.
  
• 1994-1998: Senior Lecturer in English/Group Convenor of English Language, School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, University of Wolverhampton.
  
• 1993-1994: Senior Lecturer in English and Education, School of Education, University College, Northampton.
  
• 1991-1993: Research Associate, School of Education, University of Warwick.
  
• 1979- 1991 Teacher of English and Drama, including head of department and head of year

Research Interests

Sociolinguistics: Regional/social variation in discourse structure and strategy; interactional sociolinguistics; ethnography of communication; gender and regional variation in discourse style; current work on variations of English in the West Midlands region of England and their relationship with notions of identity and place.  

Stylistics: Forms and functions of narrative; current work on the construction of place and local identity through discourse about local speech in the English West Midlands and the stylistics of crime fiction.

English Pedagogy: The relationship between education and notions of identity- national, regional and individual; current work on pedagogical stylistics. 

Externally Funded Research Projects

2011-2012: £79,864.71 (with Dr Tim Grant (PI) and Prof Gertrud Reershemius joint Co-PI) ESRC Quantitative Methods Initiative: Curriculum Innovation: Integrating QM into undergraduate programmes in Linguistics in the School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University.

2010-2012: £407,078.66 ESRC standard grant award for the project Language, Performance and Region: Discourse and Sociocultural Identity in the Wider Western Midlands

2009-2010: £36,072 Leverhulme Research Fellowship award 1st July 2009 - 30th June 2010 for the project 'Language and place: Birmingham'

2009-2010: £90,000 ESRC small grant award 1st December 2009 - 30th November 2010 for the project 'Dialect in Discourse: A Crticial Discourse Analysis Approach to Linguistic Conservatism and Sociocultural Identity in the Black Country'

PhD Supervision
I currently supervise research students in the research areas of sociolinguistics and English pedagogy.

Membership in Professional Organisations

I am a long-standing member of The Poetics and Linguistics Association www.pala.ac.uk

I am also a member of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) www.baal.org.uk and a BAAL representative on the national Committee for Languages in Education (CLIE)

Selected Publications

Books

Language and Identity in Englishes London: Routledge expected 2013

West Midlands English: Birmingham and the Black Country Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press  2012 180 pages

Researching Language: English in Action: Palgrave, 2007 174 pages

War Words:  Language, History and the Disciplining of English.  Elsevier Science, 2001 308 pages
An Introduction to Stylistics.  Stanley Thornes,  1996 205 pages

Book chapters

Clark, Urszula  ‘The problematics of prescribing grammatical knowledge: The case in England’ in  Locke Terry (ed)  Beyond the Grammar Wars: a resource for teachers and students on developing language knowledge in the English/literacy classroom  London: Routledge 2010 pp120-136

‘Teaching Detective Fiction: a case study’ in Literary Education: A Critical Reader’ eds Greg Watson and Sonia Zyngier, Palgrave 2006 

‘The English West Midlands’ in A Handbook of Varieties of English Vol 1, ed. B. Kortmann and Schneider pp 134-62. Berlin, New York Mouton de Gruyter 2004 

‘Stylistics’ (with Prof. J. McRae, University of Nottingham), in A Handbook of Applied Linguistics, eds. Alan Davies & Catherine Elder. Blackwell 2004 

‘NATE: Past, Present, and Future’, in Past, Present and Future: NATE at 40. Perspectives on English Teaching, ed. Viv Ellis (Sheffield: NATE, 2003) 2003

Articles

‘What is English For?: Language Structure and the Curriculum for English in Changing English: studies in culture and education 2011 Vol 18 (2) - http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-urszula-clark/you-are-what-you-speak_b_1131228.html

Clark, Urszula  ‘Grammar in the Curriculum for English: what next?’ in  Changing English: studies in culture and education  2010 Vol 17 (2) pp 189-200 (This article features in  Routledge Education Class of 2011.  The article has been chosen because it was the most downloaded article published by  the journal since its publication in 2010.  The link to the article can be found at: http://www.educationarena.com/journalPromotions/mostDownloaded/classof2011/ (under the literacy, languages and performing arts section).

‘Bernstein’s Theory of Pedagogic Discourse: linguistics, education policy and practice in the UK English/literacy classroom’ English Teaching: Practice and Critique 2005 Vol 4.  http://education.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal   

‘Towards a Pedagogical Stylistics’ (with Dr. S. Zyngier, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), in Language and Literature, 2003, vol. 12 (4): 339-51

'Women Beware Women: Detective Fiction and Critical Discourse Stylistics’ (with Dr. S. Zyngier), in Language and Literature, 1998, vol. 7,  no. 2: 141-58.

Research Reports

Language and Place: Birmingham Leverhulme Research Fellowship end of award report: RF/1/RFG/2009/0279 7pp

Language, Performance, and Region: Discourse and Sociocultural Identity in the Black Country end of award report ESRC RES-000-22-3744  2011 6pp

Evaluation of the Implementation of English in the National Curriculum 1991-3 (with Prof. B. Raban and J. McIntyre), SCAA Publications, 1994 [211pp]

Manageability of the English National Curriculum at Key Stages 1 and 2: Interim Report (with Prof. B. Raban and J. McIntyre), NCC Publications, 1993a

The National Curriculum and its Assessment (with Prof. B. Raban and J. McIntyre), NCC Publications, 1993b