Dr. Devyani Sharma

Biography

Devyani Sharma is a Professor in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on the interaction between language, society, and individual psychology, examining how languages, dialects, and accents reflect and influence social systems. Her studies cover a range of topics within sociolinguistics including style variation, migration, bilingualism, and the emergence of new varieties of English. Currently, she is involved in several ESRC projects investigating the dynamics of language change and the social implications of accent and dialect. Through her work, Sharma addresses how accent variation affects social identity and perception, alongside examining the attitudes towards accents within the UK. She has co-developed resources and conducted extensive public engagement to highlight issues of accent bias and social mobility. Sharma is also deeply interested in World Englishes, focusing on syntax and bilingual speech, and collaborates with computational linguists to enhance NLP models for under-resourced dialects. In addition to her academic work, she has authored multiple books on linguistics and contributes to numerous media discussions on language and society.

Research Interests

Experience