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Prf Theresa Lillis

Professor (English Lang/app Linguistics)

School of Languages & Applied Linguistics

theresa.lillis@open.ac.uk

Biography

Professional biography

I am  Professor Emeritus of English Language and Applied Linguistics at The Open University.

My main research area is writing. I have been researching writing for some 25 years from a perspective that can be summarized as the politics of access, location, production and participation. I’m committed to using ethnography as an overarching research methodology and have an ongoing interest in developing ‘text oriented ethnographic approaches’, using a range of methods. I've written about what we mean by 'writing' , for example in The sociolinguistics of writing, EUP (2013) and 'Resistir regímenes de evaluación en el estudio del escribir: hacia un imaginario enriquecido', Signo y pensamiento, (2018) 36 (71)  66-81. 

I have been involved in three main areas of empirical study.

STUDENT WRITING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

ACADEMIC WRITING FOR PUBLICATION IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

WRITING IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

 

Research interests

Current research and writing centres on:

  • Academic literacies
  • Academic writing for publication in a global context
  • Professional social work writing
  • Multi/translingual writing

 

Teaching interests

I am not currently involved in teaching.

Impact and engagement

My main impact work centres on writing practices in professional social work. For the past 3 years I have been working on the WRAM project- Write Right About Me- a multi agency project aimed at improving the writing and record making about children and youing people, co-ordinated by Miriam Smith,  Aberdeen City Council.

 

 

 

Projects

Writing in professional social work practice in a changing communicative landscape

Publications

Book

Global academic publishing: policies, perspectives and pedagogies (2017)

Working With Academic Literacies: Case Studies Towards Transformative Practice (2016)

The Politics of Language and Creativity in a Globalised World (2016)

The Sociolinguistics of Writing (2013)

A scholars’ guide to getting published in English: critical choices and practical strategies (2013)

Academic Writing in a Global Context: The politics and practices of publishing in English (2010)

Applied linguistics methods: A reader (2009)

Why Writing Matters: Issues of access and identity in writing research and pedagogy (2009)

Re-designing English (2007)

A dictionary of sociolinguistics (2004)

Teaching Academic Writing: A Toolkit for Higher Education (2003)

Language, literacy and education: A reader (2003)

Analysing language in context: A student workbook (2003)

Student writing: access, regulation, desire (2001)

Book Chapter

The language of social work (2026)

Academic literacies: a critical lens for a global academy (2025)

Prefacio. Herramientas para construir una pedagogía inclusiva de la escritura (2021)

Academic Literacies: Intereses Locales, Preocupaciones Globales? Academic Literacies: Local Interests, Global Concerns? (2021)

Problematizing English as the Privileged Language of Global Academic Publishing (2017)

Professional writers’ identities: the perceived influence of formal education and early learning (2016)

Academic writing for publication in a multilingual world (2016)

Academic Literacies: a critical lens on writing and reading in the academy (2016)

Creativity in political discourse (2016)

Learning from lecturers: What disciplinary practice can teach us about ‘good’ student writing (2015)

“Doing something that’s really important”: meaningful engagement for teachers as a resource for transformative work with student writers in the disciplines. (2015)

English medium writing for academic purposes: foundational categories, certainty and contingency (2012)

Making professional academic writing practices visible: Designing research-based heuristics to support English-medium text production (2010)

Finding the global groove: Theorising and analysing dynamic reader positioning using APPRAISAL, corpus and a concordancer (2009)

La circulation de perspectives socioculturelles états-uniennes et britanniques : traitments de l'écrit dans le supérieur (2009)

Bringing writers' voices to writing research: Talk around texts (2009)

Writers and meaning making in the context of online learning (2009)

Academic writing in English (2007)

Academic writing (2006)

Readers and Writers (2006)

'Academic Literacies' Research as Pedagogy: Dialogues of Participation (2006)

Communicative competence (2005)

Student status and the question of choice in academic writing (2005)

Voices, intertextuality and induction into schooling (2003)

Planning the assessment of student writing (2003)

Academic writing in an electronic environment (2003)

Introduction: mapping the traditions of a social perspective on language and literacy (2003)

Writing for different disciplines (2003)

Dataset

Writing in professional social work practice in a changing communicative landscape (WiSP)

Journal Article

Direct quotations in social work writing: multi-functionality and double voicing (2025)

Reflections on the procedural and practical ethics in researching professional social work writing (2024)

Who Is The ‘I’? An Exploration Of Social Work Professional Written Discourse And Implications For Social Work Education (2024)

Cerrando la brecha entre texto y contexto en la investigación sobre la escritura académica: revisitando la etnografía como método, metodología y teorización profunda / Closing the gap between text and context in researching academic writing: revisiting ethnography as method, methodology and deep theorising (2024)

Multilingualism in academic writing for publication: Putting English in its place (2024)

Manifesto: Reconsideração do Inglês como Língua Franca em Contextos Acadêmico-Científicos [Rethinking English as a Lingua Franca in Scientific-Academic Contexts] (2023)

Professional written voice ‘in flux’: the case of social work (2023)

Citation in global academic knowledge making: A paired text history methodology for studying citation practices in English and Russian (2022)

[Editorial] (2022)

The dynamics of academic knowledge making in a multilingual world: chronotypes of production (2022)

Creating a corpus of sensitive and hard-to-access texts: Methodological challenges and ethical concerns in the building of the WiSP corpus (2021)

English and/or Russian medium publications? A case study exploring academic research writing in contemporary Russian academia (2021)

Writing as a critical moment in professional discourse (2021)

Time, the Written Record, and Professional Practice: The Case of Contemporary Social Work (2020)

Exploring the core ‘preoccupation’ of social work writing: A corpus-assisted discourse study (2020)

‘Academic literacies’: sustaining a critical space on writing in academia (2019)

Book Review of 'On Writtenness: The Cultural Politics of Academic Writing' by Joan Turner (2019)

Unpacking the lore on multilingual scholars publishing in English: A discussion paper (2019)

Gender and academic writing (2018)

Trajectories of knowledge and desire: Multilingual women scholars researching and writing in academia (2018)

Resistir regímenes de evaluación en el estudio del escribir: hacia un imaginario enriquecido (2017)

‘If it’s not written down it didn’t happen’: Contemporary social work as a writing intensive profession (2017)

Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories: the ‘problem’ with case notes in contemporary social work (2017)

The politics of English, language and uptake: the case of international academic journal article reviews (2015)

Strategies and tactics in academic knowledge production by multilingual scholars (2014)

‘Getting it Write’ in social work: exploring the value of writing in academia to writing for professional practice (2013)

Quelle relation entre l’écrit académique et l’écrit professionnel? Une étude de cas dans le domaine du travail social [What is the relationship between academic writing and professional writing? A case study in the field of social work] (2012)

Economies of signs in writing for academic publication: the case of English Medium “National” Journals (2012)

Legitimising dialogue as textual and ideological goal in academic writing for assessment and publication (2011)

A case study of a research-based collaboration around writing in social work (2011)

An international journal’s attempts to address inequalities in academic publishing: developing a writing for publication programme (2010)

Who's citing whose writings? A corpus based study of citations as interpersonal resource in English medium national and English medium international journals (2010)

Academic research networks: Accessing resources for English-medium publishing (2010)

The geolinguistics of English as an academic lingua franca: Citation practices across English-medium national and English-medium international journals (2010)

Étudiants déficitaires? Le dialogisme de Bakhtine dans l’exploration des pratiques d’écriture des étudiants 'non traditionnels' à l’université’ (2009)

Ethnography as method, methodology, and "deep theorizing": closing the gap between text and context in academic writing research (2008)

Defining academic literacies research: issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy (2007)

Reframing notions of competence in scholarly writing: From individual to networked activity (2006)

Professional academic writing by multilingual scholars: interactions with literacy brokers in the production of English-medium texts (2006)

Multilingual scholars and the imperative to publish in English: Negotiating interests, demands, and rewards (2004)

Student Writing as 'Academic Literacies': Drawing on Bakhtin to Move from Critique to Design (2003)

Student writing in higher education: contemporary confusion, traditional concerns (2001)

Writing in professional social work practice in a changing communicative landscape (WISP)

Presentation / Conference

Exploring the core ‘preoccupation’ of professional social work writing: A corpus-assisted discourse study (2019)

Creating a corpus of social workers’ writing: Methodological challenges, representational issues and analytical concerns (2018)

Writing in contemporary social work: texts, technologies and trajectories (2017)

Combining ethnography and corpus to research writing practices in social work: challenges and opportunities in methodology, epistemology and application (2016)

‘If it’s not written down it didn’t happen’: Social worker perspectives on contemporary writing and recording demands (2016)

The impact of global English on local knowledge production psychology in four national contexts (2008)

Report

The sociolinguistics of writing in a global context (2012)

Trajectories of knowledge production: English medium academic writing for national, transnational and international journals (2008)