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Dr Jackie Jia Lou

Positions held:
  • Senior Lecturer, School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    I trained in linguistics at Georgetown University (PhD 2009), where I also worked as research and teaching assistant in linguistics and Chinese language instructor. I returned to City University of Hong Kong as Assistant Professor in the Department of English until I moved to the UK in 2016. Before joining Birkbeck in 2017, I lectured at Queen Mary University of London in linguistics and was affiliated with UCL IoE as an Honorary Fellow.

    My research has so far focussed on language and the city, particularly through the lens of linguistic landscape, and I have published widely on the topic, including a monograph titled The Linguistic Landscape of Chinatown: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography (Multilingual Matters, 2016). More recently, I have become interested in historical urban sociolinguistics, and received a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the project ‘Language change and urban transformation in Treaty Port Shanghai, c.1842-1943’. 

    I am an Associate Editor of the journal Linguistic Landscape (John Benjamins) and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development.

    At Birkbeck, I teach on a variety of sociolinguistic and applied linguistic modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and direct the BA Linguistics and Language and BA Linguistics and Culture programmes. I also serve on the steering committees of the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research (BISR) and the Birkbeck Institute of Moving Images (BIMI).

    Highlights

    Qualifications

    Web profiles

    Administrative responsibilities

    • Programme Director for BA Linguistics and Language and BA Linguistics and Culture
    • LCAL Cluster Exam Board Chair

    Honours and awards

    • Research Fellowship: ‘Language change and urban transformation in Treaty Port Shanghai, c.1842-1943’, Leverhulme Trust, May 2022
    • ISSF Translational Award:Covid-19 signs: Improving the impact and equality of regulatory signage in public space, Birkbeck Wellcome ISSF , May 2021
    • Applying Linguistics Grant : Increasing the visibility of linguistic diversity in an international school: Children as co-researchers and co-designers of linguistic landscape (in collaboration with Ms. Susan Stewart and Prof. Jean Marc Dewaele, Birkbeck), BAAL, May 2018
    • Research Innovation Fund: Navigating the linguistic landscapes of Chinatown: Spatial narrations of urban change, Birkbeck, May 2018

    ORCID

    0000-0002-6931-3756
  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • sociolinguistics
    • discourse and narrative analysis
    • social semiotics
    • ethnography of communication
    • linguistic landscape
    • language and the city
    • history of languages
    • language and culture

    Research overview

    My main research interest is concerned with language and the city, especially how languages are used in transnational urban spaces like Chinatown and how such spaces are represented and reconstructed through discourse. This often entails an eclectic research design which integrates sociolinguistic and discourse analysis with social- and geo-semiotic analysis, ethnographic fieldwork, and mobile video ethnography. I have also extended this approach to transnational educational spaces in collaboration with language educators with a BAAL Applied Linguistics Grant.

    The Covid-19 pandemic has also prompted me to reflect more on the role of signage in public health communication globally, which resulted in a co-edited special issue on the linguistic landscape of Covid-19. 

    More recently, I have become interested in historical urban sociolinguistics, and received a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the project ‘Language change and urban transformation in Treaty Port Shanghai, c.1842-1943’. 

    I am also an associate editor of the journal Linguistic Landscapes (John Benjamins) and serve as the Network Manager for the Linguistic Ethnography Forum, the British Association for Applied Linguistics. 

    I particularly enjoy interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers of shared interests as well as with writers, artists, and community groups. One such collaboration is an interactive sound installation named 'The Interpreter', which translates the rhythm of human speech into drum beats, designed and made by Oblik Soundwork Collective in Hong Kong.  

  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    2

    I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in undertaking research in any of my areas of research interest, particularly:

    • language, space, and place;
    • linguistic and semiotic landscapes;
    • urban sociolinguistics;
    • transnational migration;
    • linguistic ethnography

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • FENGZHI ZHAO
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Language, Space and Cosmopolitan Identity in Contemporary Shanghai
      Description:

      Language and space in the context of city have been subjected to a cosmopolitanization process where the global and the local do not exist as cultural polarities but as combined and mutually implicating principles. This research investigates language and discourse circulating around the urban space of Shanghai and explores how they influence people's place-identity and the way they understand and live with cosmopolitanism.

      Research Gate profile: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fengzhi-Zhao

      Awarded:
      2022
    • MAHA EL-FARHAN
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Activism Signage, Emplacement, and Sense of Public Space: A Mixed Methods Study of the Linguistic Landscape of Bloomsbury
      Awarded:
      2021

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • Dissertation (LNLN004D7)
    • Linguistics Final Year Project (LNLN023S6)
    • Language, Culture and Communication (LNLN063S7)
    • Sociolinguistics (LNLN067S7)
    • Empirical Research Skills Training Workshop (SSAC035Z7)
    • Language, Culture, and Communication (Level 5) (SSAC052H5)
    • Investigating Language (SSAC060H5)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Section

    External Repositories