Rate My Professor Devyani Sharma

Professor Devyani Sharma served as Professor of Linguistics and Head of the Department of Linguistics in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film at Queen Mary University of London. She earned her PhD from Stanford University. Sharma's research centers on sociolinguistics, exploring the social and cognitive foundations of language variation and change. Her academic interests include new dialects of English, migration and diaspora, accent bias, bilingualism, syntactic variation, typology, and the perceptual effects of accent on social outcomes. She has directed prominent projects such as Generations of London English, documenting generational shifts in multicultural London varieties, and Accent Bias in Britain, which has produced evidence on the persistence of accent prejudice over 50 years and its barriers to professional competence and social mobility.

Recognized for her impact, Sharma was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023 in the Linguistics and Philology section. Her key publications encompass the book From Deficit to Dialect: The Evolution of English in India and Singapore (Oxford University Press, 2023), alongside highly cited articles including "Style repertoire and social change in British Asian English" (Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2011), "Cognitive and social forces in dialect shift: Gradual change in London Asian speech" (Language Variation and Change, 2011), "Accent bias and perceptions of professional competence in England" (Journal of English Linguistics, 2021), "Dialect stabilization and speaker awareness in non-native varieties of English" (Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2005), and "50 years of British accent bias: Stability and lifespan change in attitudes to accents" (English World-Wide, 2022). Sharma has contributed chapters to major handbooks such as The Oxford Handbook of World Englishes (2017) and English in the Indian Diaspora (2014). Her scholarship has influenced policy reports, training initiatives on accent bias, and broader understanding of world Englishes and urban sociolinguistics.