Professor Gillian Ramchand

I was born in Scotland to a Scottish mother and Trinidadian father, and grew up between the UK and the Caribbean, both of which I consider an important part of my identity. I completed two Bachelor Degrees  from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one in Mathematics and one in Philosophy (both 1988) and received a PhD in Linguistics from Stanford University  in 1994. My first academic position was at Oxford University as Lecturer in General Linguistics (1994-2004) when I was affiliated with Linacre College.  I left to take up a research position and eventual professorship at UiT the Arctic University of Norway in 2004, where I remained until 2024. My research interests lie at the intersection of syntax (linguistic form) and semantics (linguistic meaning) and how our specifically human cognition both shapes and is shaped by language.   I  have worked on languages as diverse as Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian and Bengali.