Tope Omoniyi, Ferguson Fellow
Profile
I am Professor of Sociolinguistics at Roehampton
University where I coordinate the Master of Research in Sociolinguistics
Programme and increasingly the MPhil and PhD programmes. My career
as an academic has spanned three continents: Africa, Asia and Europe
where I have held teaching and/or research positions during the
last two decades. In addition to these three continents, I have
had conference engagements and research collaborations in North
America during the same period. My intellectual journey began in
1981 as a Graduate Assistant in the Department of English at the
University of Lagos. I was appointed Lecturer Grade II in 1986 upon
completion of an MPhil (English) degree. I took a PhD in Linguistics
from the University of Reading in 1994 and served a three-year lectureship
contract at the National Institute of Education, Singapore to May
1997. In September 1997 I went to Trinity College Dublin as a Research
Associate and in October 1998 I was appointed Senior Lecturer in
the School of English Language Education, Thames Valley University
in London. I joined the English Language and Linguistics programme
at Roehampton in February 2000.
Research interests
My research interests cover a range of sociolinguistic
issues around the politics of language and the discourse of identity
in relation to themes such as language policy and planning, multilingualism
and education, literacy and indigenous languages in development,
globalization, popular culture and diaspora, World Englishes, and
the New Europe. I participate in a number of international research
networks on themes of interest to me such as the Sociology of Language
and Religion, AILA Research Network on Africa, Globalization, Identity
Politics and Social Conflict. I am curious about as well as intrigued
by the challenge that change broadly conceived poses to theory and
methodology in identity research.
Key publications
1. The Sociolinguistics of Borderlands: Two Nations,
One Community (Africa World Press 2004, pp272);
2. ‘Culture and identity shifts in the era of globalization:
digitalisation, diaspora, and other concerns’, in Suman Gupta,
Tapan Basu, and Subarno Chattarji (eds.) India in the Age of
Globalization: Contemporary Discourses and Texts (Delhi: Nehru
Memorial Museum & Library, 2003, pp. 353-398);
3. ‘Hip-Hop through the World Englishes lens: A response to
globalization’ in World Englishes and Global Popular Cultures
(Blackwell 2006);
4. ‘West African Englishes’ in The Handbook of World
Englishes (Blackwell 2006);
5. ‘Societal multilingualism and multifaithism’ in Tope
Omoniyi and Joshua Fishman (eds.) Explorations in the Sociology
of Language and Religion (John Benjamins 2006);
6. ‘Hierarchy of Identities’ in Tope Omoniyi and Goodith
White (eds.) The Sociolinguistics of Identity (Continuum
Books 2006);
7. ‘Outsourcing and migrational anxieties in discourse perspectives’
in Suman Gupta and Tope Omoniyi (eds.) Cultures of Economic
Migration (Ashgate 2007).
Other
Writing
In my other world I am a poet, author of a volume
of poems (Farting Presidents & Other Poems, Kraft Books,
2001), contributor to six Forward Press anthologies, and to poetry
magazines in the USA, Nigeria, Britain, Singapore and Malaysia
BBC Website
Sentinel
Poetry website
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