I am Professor in English Linguistics at the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) and the principal investigator of the Emerging Standards project. My research interests include language variation and change, (socio-)historical linguistics, dialectology, corpus linguistics, historical stylistics, the interface between manuscript and print, and language standardisation, all of which are combined in this project. To find out more about my teaching and research/publications click on this link.
In the Emerging Standards project I am focusing on the development of the urban vernacular of the city of York in the period c. 1400-1700. York (via Hull) was considered one of the primary ports in England in the later Middle Ages, and it was therefore an important centre for the military, church and administration. Apart from investigating the development of the York urban vernacular and the (external and internal) factors that played a role therein, I aim to illuminate the complex processes that are involved in the emergence and development of Standard English.