Dr Maria Vasilaki

Dr. Maria Vasilaki is joining the King's Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication (LDC) as a Lecturer in Sociolinguistics.

Maria's PhD thesis, which was awarded by King’s College London in 2020 and was funded by 5 British and Greek institutions, revolves around online political impoliteness and blame-attribution processes in the context of the 2015 Greek socioeconomic crisis.

Previously, Maria had completed two MA degrees with Distinction (Lancaster University - MA Discourse Studies, University of Wolverhampton - MA Contemporary Media), as well as a BA with Honours in Greek & Latin Language and Literature (Major in Linguistics) at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Before joining the LDC, Maria held Visiting and Adjunct Lectureships in Linguistics at the University of Cyprus and at the University of Nicosia. She was also involved in the academic training of primary school teachers in language-related subjects. In addition, from 2016 to 2021, Maria was a member of the programme teams for KCL's BA English Language & Linguistics and MA Education, covering a range of modules related to Linguistics, Education and Research Methods.

Outside academia, Maria has gained extensive experience as a Teacher of Modern Greek as a Second/Foreign Language within the British context.

Research

Maria’s multi-faceted research explores different areas of pragmatics, discourse studies, language and gender and language and new media. More specifically, her work focuses on (political) im/politeness online and offline, on digital pragmatics, on critical discourse analyses of sociopolitical and gendered discourses (eg argumentation patterns of extreme-right parties, linguistic sexism in news outlets), and on language use in times of crises. Her interests also extend to the Linguistics of social media and to the links between critical discourse studies and educational contexts. Her research has been published in renowned academic journals and has been presented at international Linguistics conferences.

Her research interests include: 

• Im/politeness studies & studies of linguistic aggression and conflict (online & offline), as well as further areas related to Online/Digital Pragmatics in general
• Internet Linguistics (eg language use and discourse practices in social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter)
• Critical Discourse Analysis (eg language and political communication, language use in critical sociopolitical moments and national crises)
• Language and Gender Studies (eg gendered discourses and biases in the media)
• Sociolinguistics (eg language attitudes and ideologies, creative linguistic practices)
• Discourse Studies in educational contexts 

Teaching 

Maria is responsible for the modules:

• Linguistic Politeness
• Language and Power

Maria contributes to the modules:

• Researching Linguistic Diversity
• English Grammar
• Describing English Language 

PhD supervision

Maria would be happy to supervise PhD students working on the following areas:

• Im/politeness strategies & patterns in online and offline (political) communication
• Critical discourse analysis of political discourse and argumentation