Profile

Marilyn Martin-Jones originally began her research career in 1979 as a member of the Linguistic Minorities Project research team, based at the University of London, Institute of Education. After four years in London, she moved to the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University and served as a member of the academic staff there for 15 years (from 1983-1998). In 1998, she was appointed to a Chair in Bilingualism and Education in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. She took up her post as Professor of Languages in Education at the University of Birmingham in May 2005.

Research and Projects Interests

Over the last twenty five years, Marilyn Martin-Jones has been involved in two broad types of research: (1) research on bilingual discourse and codeswitching in face-to-face spoken interaction; (2) research on language, literacy and the uses of texts in bilingual and multilingual settings. Her research has been primarily sociolinguistic and ethnographic in nature and it has been based in different research sites: in urban and rural settings, in community contexts as well as in schools, colleges and classrooms. She has a particular interest in gender and ethnicity and in the ways in which language and literacy practices contribute to the construction of identities, in local lifeworlds and in institutional contexts. She also has a concern with investigating the ways in which such practices are embedded in local and global relations of power.

These themes are reflected in two of her recent books and in work in progress: Multilingual Literacy Practices: Reading and Writing Different Worlds (John Benjamins, 2000); Voices of Authority: Education and Linguistic Difference (Ablex, 2001) and Bilingual Education: Discourses and Practices (Palgrave – forthcoming). She has also published accounts of her empirical work and her reflections on theory and method in the following journals: The International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Language and Education, The International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education, Applied Linguistics and Linguistics and Education.

In addition to her specific research interests in bilingualism and multilingualism, Marilyn Martin-Jones has a general commitment to promoting research on language in education. She is currently co-editor (with Dr Alexandra Jaffe) of the international journal Linguistics and Education (published by Elsevier). She is also editing Volume 3 of the new revised Encyclopedia of Language and Education (with Dr Anne-Marie de Mejía and Professor Nancy Hornberger), on Discourse and Education. All ten volumes of this Encyclopedia are to be published by Springer.

Teaching Interests

Since 1983, Marilyn Martin-Jones has been designing, developing, coordinating and teaching modules and courses in different areas of Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and Research Methodology at postgraduate and undergraduate level. At Lancaster University and at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, she taught the following courses: Bilingualism, Bilingual Education, Language and Gender, Language and Education, Language in Society, Language and Anthropology, Research Issues in Applied Linguistics, Research Methods in Education and Ways of Reading. Some of the modules she coordinated at the University of Wales Aberystwyth were organised bilingually or through the medium of Welsh (Bilingualism, Bilingual Education and Ways of Reading)

She has also taught at postgraduate level in Switzerland, the USA, Sweden and the Netherlands. Whilst she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Pennsylvania (Fall semester, 1997/8), she taught a course on Linguistic Diversity in Education, and, during a year as Visiting Professor in Sweden (2002/3), she taught a postgraduate seminar on Bilingualism from an educational perspective at the Centre for Research on Bilingualism, Stockholm University. In Switzerland and in the Netherlands, she contributed to inter-university seminars for doctoral students. At the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, in March 1999, she ran a research student seminar on Discourse practices in the language class and, at Tilburg University, in June 2003, she taught an intensive course on Interaction in multilingual classrooms as part of the Netherlands Graduate Summer School of Linguistics (Landeljike Onderzoekschool Taalwetenschap – LOT).

At the University of Birmingham, she is currently contributing to the Ph.D. Research Training Programme, to the MA Education TEFL and to teaching and undergraduate supervision in the area of Language and Gender.

Publications [pdf]