Andrea Schalley, Professor of English

In the same year, she moved to Australia, to the University of New England in Armidale, NSW, where she took up a postdoctoral position, followed by a fixed-term lecturership. In 2008, Andrea Schalley accepted a permanent position at Griffith University in Brisbane, QLD, Australia, most recently as Associate Professor in Linguistics.

“My research field is linguistics – the scientific study of language – and I specifically focus on semantics, the study of meaning in natural language, and how it relates to human cognition. I also work on multilingualism, the field of study that is concerned with individuals or communities of speakers who use two or more languages in their daily life.“

Language is one of the most intriguing aspects of human knowledge and behaviour and a very powerful tool. To understand how language works is to understand more about the human mind and about communication more generally. Linguistic research is important in a range of aspects. It includes serving the aim to create ‘real’ communication in human-machine interactions (by way of computationally processing language, synthesising speech etc.), helping individuals with their daily lives (for instance through knowledge on the acquisition of first and foreign languages), or supporting intercultural communication (through for instance cross-linguistic comparisons of linguistic behaviour).

“Society at large benefits from my research. Some of my research has been useful for natural language processing, other research has supported the maintenance and development of children’s minority and home languages. Over the past five years, I have been reaching out to parent networks, teachers and inclusion support workers through workshops and advice on bilingualism.“

Andrea Schalley has long-standing connections within the Swedish higher education sector. She has been a supervisor of a PhD student in linguistics at Umeå University, who graduated in 2013. Furthermore, she is a convenor of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) Research Network on ‘Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance and Development’, which currently has around 100 members from around 20 countries, many of which are from Swedish universities. She is looking forward to productive collaborations within Sweden.

Andrea Schalley started her position at Karlstad University on 1 September 2016. She has moved to Karlstad with her husband and two sons.

“We look forward to getting to know Karlstad and its surroundings. We enjoy being outdoors and love swimming and skiing.“