I received a BA (Hons) and PGCE in Russian and French at the University of Strathclyde and after spending many years studying and working in the USSR and Russia,I returned to Ireland where I completed an MA in Applied Linguistics followed in 2012 by a PhD in Second Language Acquisition at UCC. I am particularly interested in how learning context and learner identity interact in the acquisition of social aspects of language. These topics are explored in my monograph 'The Impact of Learning Context on the Acquisition of Sociopragmatic Variation Patterns'. I have been invited to give guest lectures on Study Abroad at the University of Pittsburgh summer school in St Petersburg, Russia and at the university of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA and the University of Liverpool, UK.An additional research interest is the enactment of identity in computer mediated discourse. I have recently published a paper entitled 'Lard-eaters, gay-ropeans, sheeple and prepositions: lexical and syntactic devices employed to position the other in Russian online political forums'.I am co-director of the MA in Applied Linguistics where I supervise theses on Second Language Acquisition, Language in Migration, Pragmatics, Computer-mediated Discourse, and Language Ideologies. I currently supervise PhD students on language practices in study abroad and in forced migration, native speakerism and EFL and computer-mediated political discourse. I am on the management committee of the EU-funded COST Actions 'Study Abroad: A European Perspective' and 'European Network of International Student mobility' and I am the chair of the research network TraMe (transnational mobility in education). I am co-editor of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics journal TEANGA

Ecological Perspectives to Second Language Acquisition Transnational Mobility and Language Practices Acquisition of English as an LX Acquisition of Russian as an LX Pragmatics Language and IdentityEnactment of Political IdentitiesComputer-mediated Discourse

Language Acquisition (First and Second)PragmaticsLanguage and IdentityIntercultural communicationDiscourse