Linguistics Alumni

Welcome message from Richard Breheny, Head of the Research Department

Dear Alumni,

Welcome back to UCL Linguistics! If you have graduated a while ago, you may not be aware of the various changes the department went through. We have moved from the house in Gordon Square to Chandler House, we have joined the Faculty of Brain Sciences, and we are no longer one department with Phonetics (although the phoneticians are also based in Chandler House and we still cooperate with them in many ways).

The Research Department of Linguistics, as we are now officially called, has emerged from these changes as a strong group, with many new, and some older, members of staff, all of whom are leading experts in their field of study. We currently have eleven permanent members of staff, and will make three more appointments over the next two years. In addition to our traditional areas of strength in Phonology, Pragmatics and Syntax, we are now also actively engaged in research in Semantics and have further developed our research strands in Neuro- and Psycho-Linguistics (which includes work on Language Acquisition and Language Disorders). Our success is underlined by various grants and the fact that members of the department currently function as editors of Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Linguistic Inquiry (Squibs), Mind and Language and Syntax. We invite you to explore our website to find out more.

Teaching and supervision of PhD research remain core activities of the Department. We take on more students than we did in the past, and are working hard to develop courses that are informed by the latest language research. Members of staff are enthusiastic about what they do and try to communicate the exhilaration of new research findings and a growing understanding of the language faculty in their classes. We are optimistic about the field and feel privileged to pass on some of our knowledge to people starting out in Linguistics. Of course, academics are not necessarily the best organised people in the world, so we are very happy to have the support of the Chandler House teaching and learning team, which is led by Stefanie Anyadi, a Linguistics alumnus that many of you may know!

It is a pity that we often lose touch with our former students. These web pages are a small step toward rectifying the situation. We will regularly update them to give you a better picture of what is going on in the Department. We hope you will drop us a line occasionally and remain involved in the life of the department. Even better, you could come to one of the talks and seminars in the department – we would be delighted.

With kind regards,

Richard Breheny