Professor Dr. David Britain

Biography

David Britain is a Professor of Modern English Linguistics at the University of Bern, where he has been since January 2010. His academic journey started at the University of East Anglia, where he studied Linguistics and French from 1983 to 1987, followed by a UK ESRC-sponsored PhD in sociolinguistics at the University of Essex. His early research involved investigating the linguistic consequences of dialect contact in Fenland, East Anglia. After his PhD, he pursued a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at Victoria University of Wellington, contributing to a large-scale analysis of New Zealand English. He returned to Essex in 1993 as a Lecturer and became a Senior Lecturer in 2002. Throughout his career, he has served on editorial boards for various linguistics journals and has authored numerous publications covering topics such as language variation, hilltop Urban dialectology, dialect ideologies, and language change. His research interests also include new dialect formation and the interface between dialectology and human geography. He has a strong commitment to teaching, currently supervising several PhD students and designing courses that reflect his expertise in sociolinguistics and dialectology.

Research Interests

Experience

Courses