Prof. Helen Kelly Holmes

Biography

Helen Kelly-Holmes is Professor of Applied Languages in the School of Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics, Ollscoil Luimnigh/University of Limerick and is an active member of the Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS), having previously served as Director of the Centre. Her research concerns sociolinguistics, the study of language in society, and focuses on the interrelationship between media, markets, technologies and languages. She is particularly interested in the economic aspects of multilingualism, especially in relation to minority languages and the global political economy of English Recent books include: Sociolinguistics from the Periphery: Small Languages in New Circumstances (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Language and the Media (Routledge Critical Concepts in Linguistics 2015); and Multilingualism and the Periphery (Oxford University Press, 2013). Helen is Co-Editor-in-Chief (with Kate Menken, CUNY) of Language Policy (published by Springer), the leading journal in the field, and of Palgrave's long-running Language and Globalization book series (with Sue Wright). She holds an Adjunct Professorship in Discourse Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Helen is a graduate of the University of Limerick, where she studied Marketing and German (1987-1991). She completed her PhD in 1995 at Aston University Birmingham on the topic of advertising as a new discourse in the former German Democratic Republic. She took up a Lectureship in German at Aston University in Birmingham in 1995, and joined University of Limerick in 2002 as a UL Foundation Research Scholar (2002-2007). She was appointed as a Lecturer in Sociolinguistics in 2007 and was appointed to the Chair in Applied Languages in 2015. In September 2017, Helen was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.