Prof. Dr. habil. Danguolė Mikulėnienė

Institute of the Lithuanian Language (Lithuania)

Prof. Dr. habil. Danguolė Mikulėnienė (born on September 11, 1952 in Kaunas, Lithuania) is a Lithuanian linguist. In 1975 she graduated from the University of Vilnius with a Bachelor’s degree in Lithuanian language and literature. In 1981 she attained the degree of Candidate of Sciences in Philology. Later, in 2007 she obtained habilitation at Vytautas Magnus University. Since 1990 Mikulėnienė has been working at the Institute of the Lithuanian Language. From 2001 to 2014 she was the head of the Department of Language History and Dialectology. Since 2014 Mikulėnienė is the head of the Centre of Geolingvistics and senior researcher. From 1975 to 1990 she was a lecturer at the Pedagogical Institute of Šiauliai (Šiauliai University), since 2007 she has been a professor at Vytautas Magnus University, and since 2010 Mikulėnienė is a professor of Kaunas Faculty of Vilnius University. From 1992 to 1995 she was a secretary at the State Commission of the Lithuanian Language, which is accountable to the Seimas (the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania). Later, from 1995 to 1998 Mikulėnienė was a Deputy Chairperson of the Commission and from 1998 to 2002 – Commission Chairperson. Her main interest lies in the fields of diachronic and synchronic dialectology, accentuation and morphology, history of language, geolinguistics, Lithuanian language standardization and teaching.

Dr. Chris Montgomery

University of Sheffield (United Kingdom)

Chris Montgomery is a Senior Lecturer in Dialectology at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom). He was the co-editor with Dr Emma Moore (University of Sheffield) of Language and a Sense of Place: Studies in Language and Region (2017), and co-editor with Dr Jennifer Cramer (University of Kentucky) of Cityscapes and Perceptual Dialectology (2016). Along with Professor Karen Corrigan (Newcastle University), he edited a special issue of English Language and Linguistics on Sense of place in the history of English (2015). Dr Montgomery has written 15 chapters and articles on perceptions of dialects of English in England, Scotland, and Wales, as well as advances in the field of Perceptual Dialectology. His research interests focus on how linguistically naive informants respond to language, and the reasons behind these responses. He has largely worked in the field of Perceptual Dialectology, with a particular focus on methodological approaches to the study of non-linguists' perceptions, including the use of mapping software to process data gathered in the field. He is also interested in real-time reactions to regional speech, including the features of speech that non-linguists react to, and what underlies such reactions.

Dr. Christoph Purschke

Institute for Luxembourgish language and literatures at the University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

Christoph Purschke is working as a postdoc for sociolinguistics and multilingualism at the Institute for Luxembourgish language and literatures at the University of Luxembourg. Beforehand, he was employee of long years‘ standing at the Research Center „Deutscher Sprachatlas“ in Marburg, where he finished his doctorate and participated in the development of a comprehensive research platform for the German regional languages (www.regionalsprache.de). He is a board member of the International Society for Dialectology of German (IGDD) also committed to the promotion of young scholars in dialectology. In his work, Christoph tries to combine his sociolinguistic background with new methodological approaches in the field (citizen science, linguistic landscaping, computer science) and a vidid interest in theory of culture and language philosophy. His research focuses on the complex interdependencies between perception and action on the one hand and the structure and dynamics of cultural symbol systems on the other hand. He is interested in the empirical analysis of sociolinguistic practice, new methodological approaches to the study of language perception and evaluation, and the development of theoretical models for the explanation of scientific and every day practice in the lifeworld. Beyond that, he is particularly concerned with the opportunities and challenges of societal engagement, digital methodology, and the open research movement for the future of the humanities.

Prof. Juan-Andrés Villena-Ponsoda

University of Malaga (Spain)

Full Professor of General Linguistics and Permanent Seminar Director at the Universidad de Málaga, Spain. He is head of the Malaga Urban Vernacular Research Group, MUV (HUM392), and has led several national and regional research projects focused on sociolinguistics, linguistic variation and corpus linguistics. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Series: SILV, Studies in Language Variation (John Benjamins) and part of the scientific committee and advisory board to several language and linguistics journals and magazines, such as Oralia, ELUA, Revista de Filología, Lingua Americana, Entreculturas, etc. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the International Conference on Language Variation and Change (ICLaVE) and has taken part in the steering committee of the European Science Foundation (ESF) Network on Social Dialectology (Convergence and Divergence of dialects in Europe). He was the local organiser of the international Summer School on Convergence and Divergence of Dialects held in Malaga (1998) and head of the Malaga ICLaVE 9 committee (3-5 June, 2017, www.Iclave9.uma.site). He is the author of several articles in journals (Sociolinguistica, IJSL) and chapters in University textbooks (Mouton de Gruyter, CUP) in Germany, Italy, Great Britain and the Unites States.