I am Programme Leader for BA English and Senior Lecturer in English Language, at the Media Department of Middlesex University. Before moving to Middlesex in 2015, I worked at the European University of Cyprus, University of Surrey, Swansea University and King's College London.
My research interests are in discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. I have mainly worked with Greek Cypriot data, yet my work and publications are not positioned solely within Cypriot and Greek Studies but also in the broader fields of interactional approaches to language and identities research, and especially language and ageing. My current research, in collaboration with Petros Karatsareas, documents ‘Grenglish’ the emblematic variety that London’s Greek Cypriots borrowed from English and adapted into the Cypriot Greek phonological and grammatical system.
I convene the bi-weekly Language and Communication research seminars series.
Qualifications:
Cypriot Greek, Standard Modern Greek, English, Spanish
I coordinate and teach a number of undergraduate modules in English Language and Linguistics including, for 2019-20:
I currently co-supervise four PhD candidates, who work on the following topics:
I welcome enquires from prospective PhD students on ageing, discourse and identities, and talk-in-interaction.
My research interests include:
Karatsareas, Petros and Charalambidou, Anna (2021) Exploring linguistic hybridity and lexical creativity in the UK’s Greek Cypriot diaspora: the Grenglish project. Cahiers du Centre d’Études Chypriotes , No. 50 (2020). pp. 431-456. ISSN 0761-8271
Charalambidou, Anna (2019) Tradition, authenticity and expertise in and through Cypriot Easter flaounes. Food & History , 17 (2-2019). pp. 41-73. ISSN 1780-3187
Charalambidou, Anna (2019) Repairs and old-age categorisations: interactional and categorisation analysis. Linguistics Vanguard: A Multimodal Journal for the Language Sciences , 5 (s2). ISSN 2199-174X
Charalambidou, Anna (2019) Terms of address in peer interactions of older women. In: 4th Corpora for Language and Aging Research conference (CLARe 4), 27 Feb - 01 Mar 2019, University of Helsinki, Helsinki.
Charalambidou, Anna (2018) The normality and expectedness of ill health in later life: Painful tellings. In: 5th International Conference of Conversation Analysis (ICCA-18), 11-15 Jul 2018, Loughborough University.
To date, I have been awarded a total of £126.721 research and knowledge transfer awards for individual and mainly collaborative but also individual projects, including:
Diversity that we can hear
I am the Principal Investigator working with colleagues from Middlesex, Northumbria and York on a project entitled 'Diversity that we can hear'. This research aims to analyse tutors’ awareness and perceptions of issues around accent diversity (whether regional, global or second language) in the secondary and university classroom in the UK and whether and how accent diversity affects their teaching practices and curriculum design.
The Grenglish Project
I am currently working on a community engagement project: The Grenglish project, with Dr Petros Karatsareas (Westminster). Like many other community languages that were transplanted from their places of origin to London as a result of migration, Cypriot Greek developed in a unique way in the British capital including through the borrowing of a host of English words and their incorporation into the Cypriot Greek grammatical system. These words came to be collectively recognised as a new linguistic variety labelled ‘Grenglish’, unique to London’s Cypriot Greek speakers. We are capturing the Grenglish lexical stock in a way that involves the community and creates impact through a permanent record of its linguistic history (including a print dictionary). Our website asks Grenglish speakers to upload Grenglish words; their form; their meaning; visual material; stories that involve the use of Grenglish; thoughts about their origin.
You can follow the project on twitter @GrenglishProj.
Consuming Authenticities: Time, Place and the Past in the Construction of "Authentic" Foods and Drinks
I was a co-investigator at the 'Consuming Authenticities: Time, Place and the Past in the Construction of "Authentic" Foods and Drinks' project, sponsored by the AHRC - Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past (£54,753). An outcome of this project is the general audience book: Abbots, E. J., Charalambidou, A. Martins A. and Toner, D. (2015) Authentic Recipes from Around the World. Ceredigion, Wales: HAT Events. ISBN 978 0956255396
It addressed the temporal relationships and ideas that contribute to the construction of narratives of authenticity in relation to four foods and drinks: pulque (an alcoholic drink from Central Mexico), flaounes (celebration Easter pies from Cyprus), Welsh craft cider and acarajé (a street snack from Brazil).
For more information, please check the project's website and blog
School Partnerships
I am keen to forge partnerships and community engagement programmes between Middelsex and schools and colleges. I coordinated a partnership between Middlesex and Haringey Sixth Form College. Middlesex English students mentored students from Haringey College and together they coproduced the 2018 volume of the magazine and blog 'Haringey Unchained', which bring out the critical and creative consciousness of a vibrant college and diverse university. Email me for a copy of the magazine.
Blog for sharing ideas about English: London English
Membership of learned societies:
Public talks and refereed conference presentations (since 2013):
I tweet @DrAnnaMDX
