Professor Willem Hollmann (SFHEA)

Head of the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences; Professor of Linguistics

  • College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
  • School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
  • Linguistics and English Language

Contact details

Address

Street

Dugald Stewart Building
3 Charles Street

City
Edinburgh
Post code
EH8 9AD

Availability

Background

Willem B. Hollmann became Head of the School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences at Edinburgh University in 2024. Formerly, at Lancaster University, he was Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Dean of Recruitment & Internationalisation in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences; Interim Head of Politics, Philosophy and Religion; Deputy Dean; and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Willem has mainly published on cognitive linguistics, cognitive sociolinguistics, dialect grammar and language change. More recently he has developed an active research interest in verbal deception detection.  

In terms of his engagement he has a long-standing commitment to language education in the UK and is the Chair of the LAGB's Education Committee as well as a member (and former Secretary and Chair) of the Committee for Linguistics in Education.  

Willem writes about language education, and has covered topics such as grammar teaching (on The Conversation, in the NATE journal Primary Matters, and, with Prof. Dick Hudson, in TES), on common but harmful misconceptions around standard English and, together with Dr. Gee Macrory and Prof. Cathie Wallace, on synthetic phonics and its use in primary education. He has done interviews for national and international radio and his work has been featured in mainstream print media in the UK and beyond. 

He has done a range of external consultancy work related to language and education as well; for example, for the UK Department for Education (DfE), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA, Northern Ireland) and the awarding body OCR.

Qualifications

MA (University of Amsterdam), MA (University of Manchester), PhD (University of Manchester)

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

Willem would welcome applications in any of these areas: cognitive-typological linguistic theory (especially construction grammar and the usage-based model); cognitive sociolinguistics; dialect grammar; language change and the history of English; and verbal deception detection. 

Past PhD students supervised

  • Monira Al-Mohizea (lectureship at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) 

  • Nadia AlOrainy 

  • Efrosini Deligianni (lectureship at the University of New South Wales, Australia) 

  • Claire Dembry (language research manager, Cambridge University Press) 

  • Steve Disney (senior lectureship at University College Plymouth) 

  • Costas Gabrielatos (senior lectureship at Edge Hill University) 

  • Liviana Galiano (lectureship at University of Catania) 

  • Mathew Gillings (assistant professorship at Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien) 

  • Caterina Guardamagna (lectureship at the University of Liverpool) 

  • Yueyuan Li (lectureship at Zhejiang University of International Studies, Hangzhou, China) 

  • Noor Malihah (lectureship at State Institute for Islamic Studies, Salatiga, Indonesia) 

  • Bethan Malory (lectureship at UCL) 

  • Marvin Hulin Ren (professorship at North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China) 

  • Soyoon Park 

  • Dan Ponsford 

  • Vittorio Tantucci (lectureship at Lancaster University) 

  • Jianming Wu (lectureship at Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China) 

  • Shuo Yu (lectureship at Minzu University of China) 

Current research interests

cognitive-typological linguistics (including construction grammar); cognitive sociolinguistics; language change; history of English; dialect grammar; forensic linguistics