LANGUAGES OF CYPRUS
Live symposium, shedding light to the linguistic varieties spoken in Cyprus. Audience may participate in a Q&A session. Organised by the Cyprus Centre at the University of Westminster.
Presentations by:
Dr Elena Ioannidou, University of Cyprus (Cypriot Greek)
Dr Matthias Kappler, Università Ca’ Foscari Venice (Cypriot Turkish)
Dr Spyros Armostis, University of Cyprus (Cypriot Maronite Arabic)
Dr Chryso Pelekani, University of Cyprus (Cypriot Romani)
Professor Anaid Donabedian-Demopoulos, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales Paris (Cypriot Armenian)
Dr Düriye Gökçebağ, University of Cyprus (Learning the language of the ‘other’ at the Association for Bilingualism in Cyprus)
Dr Anna Charalambidou, Middlesex University (The languages of Cyprus in diaspora)
Hosted by Dr Petros Karatsareas, University of Westminster
Dr. Petros Karatsareas is a Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics at the University of Westminster. His research interests include the sociolinguistics of multilingualism and multilingual education, with an emphasis on the UK’s immigrant languages and especially Greek among the Greek Cypriot diaspora. He has published articles on the Cypriot Greek dialect in the UK and its integration into language teaching in Greek complementary schools.
Matthias Kappler, (phd 1998 at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-University, Frankfurt/Main), was Associate Professor of Turkish Linguistics and Literature until 2011 at the University of Cyprus, and holds currently the same position at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Language Review. His main research interests are language contacts in South-Eastern Europe, Asia Minor and Cyprus; languages and literatures in Cyprus; Turkish texts in Greek letters (‘Karamanlidika’); Ottoman language and literature in the 18th and 19th centuries; Ottoman poetry; Greek Islamic philology; and the History of Greek-Ottoman grammarianism.
Dr Chryso Pelekani is a Special Scientist at the Language Center of the UCY and Adjunct Faculty member at the UNIC. She is a collaborator of the research organization CARDET and the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR). Since 2016 she is the chairwoman of the 1st Cyprus Roma Association (CypRom) and since 2019 the chairwoman of the committee of the Human Rights and Social Affairs of the Parallel Parliament of Cyprus. She has published articles; related to foreign language teaching, minority language preservation, national Roma integration strategies etc., in established and well-known international scientific journals, book chapters as well as conference proceedings
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Düriye Gökçebağ: Undergraduate studies at the University of Ankara (B.A. in Greek Language and Literature, 2000). Graduate studies at the University of Athens (M.A. Greek Philology, 2003). She has completed M.A. seminars in Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language at 9 Eylul University of Izmir. Her PhD thesis is on Teaching Turkish to Greek speakers as a Foreign Language at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian Studies of the University of Athens. Professional experience includes the teaching of Turkish as a foreign language at the Anatolian Languages and Culture Centre from 2000 to 2005 in Athens. Since 2005, she has been working at the Language Centre of the University of Cyprus as a Turkish instructor and coordinator. She has been a member of the Pancyprian Exam Committee for Turkish language since 2005. She has also been responsible for COT Turkish exams since 2010. From 2009 to 2011 she worked as a researcher at Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union “Moblang” teaching foreign languages via mobile phones. She is responsible for preparation of translation exams (Turkish into Greek and Greek into Turkish) on behalf of the Ministry of Interior since 2017. As a translator, she has published two books, "Dengesiz Adım" (2013) and "Yanılsama" (2016). In 2017, she participated as a coordinator and instructor of Turkish language in "Bi-Communal Education Programme for teaching Greek and Turkish to Greek and Turkish Cypriots”.
Elena Ioannidou is a sociolinguist and an Αssociate Professor in Language Education at the Department of Education, University of Cyprus. She holds a BA (Ed) in Education (University of Cyprus), an MA in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching (University of Southampton, UK) and a PhD in Sociolinguistics and Education (University of Southampton, UK). She has worked as a Lecturer and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Education, University of Cyprus (2009-2019), and as a postdoctoral fellow (2005-2006) and a Research Associate (2007-2009) at the Centre for Applied Language Research at the University of Southampton. Her research interests focus on the concept of a social theory of language, on language variation and multilingualism and on the interrelations of language and identity. Elena Ioannidou is a trained ethnographer, with a special interest on linguistic ethnography and on studying linguistic communities. Her theoretical grounding lies in the constructs of language as performance and on the interrelations of language choice and language values with larger social groupings such as linguistic communities and social networks. She is also interested in the pedagogical dimension of language teaching, focusing on issues of literacy, genre-based education and increasing metalinguistic awareness to achieve functional and critical literacy across all ages. Her research projects have been funded by EU, Leventis foundation, the Ministry of Education of Cyprus and the University of Cyprus. She is a founding member of the Literacy Association of Cyprus and has been a board member of the Linguistic Society of Cyprus.
Spyros Armostis is a Lecturer in Linguistics at the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus. He holds a BA in Classics from the University of Cyprus and an MPhil and PhD in Linguistics (Phonetics) from the University of Cambridge. His PhD thesis topic was the phonetics of plosive and affricate gemination in Cypriot Greek. His research interests lie in the fields of Phonetics, Phonology, Sociolinguistics, Clinical Linguistics, and Grapholinguistics. Focal points of his work have been the study of Cypriot Greek and Cypriot Arabic. He is currently the president of the Cyprus Linguistics Society (CyLing), a board member of the Cyprus Roma Association (CYPROM), and an appointed member of the Cyprus Permanent Committee for the Standardisation of Geographical Names (ΜΚΕΤΓΟ)
Dr Anna Charalambidou is Senior Lecturer in English Language at Middlesex University. She has mainly worked with Cypriot Greek data, yet her work and publications are positioned in the broader fields of language and identities research, and especially language and ageing. Her current research, in collaboration with Petros Karatsareas, documents ‘Grenglish’ the variety that UK’s Greek Cypriots borrowed from English and adapted into the Cypriot Greek phonological and grammatical system.
Anaid Donabedian is a full Professor in Armenian linguistics at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris, France. She is a member of the Universite Sorbonne-Paris Cite and of the Structure and Dynamics of Languages laboratory. She is the co-editor of the scientific journal Faits de Languages, a member extraordinary of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia and a member of the International Council of Armenian Studies.
ABOUT
The Cyprus High Commission in the UK celebrates the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of Cyprus with a series of online cultural events in collaboration with Cypriot and British academic and cultural institutions, showcasing Cyprus’s cultural heritage as well as contemporary Cypriot culture. Join us for a week of concerts, performances, webinars, interviews, panel discussions, live streamings and film premieres.
Organised by
Cyprus High Commission in UK - Cultural Section
