Prof Ioanna Sitaridou

Ioanna Sitaridou, Ptychion (Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki), Licenciatura (Lisbon), MA (London), PhD (Manchester). Director of Studies in Linguistics and Director of Studies in Modern and Medieval Languages (Part IB, Year Abroad). 

College

I’ve been a Fellow of Queens’ College since 2004. Queens’ is one of the few Colleges to have had an internal Director of Studies for Linguistics since 2004 (prior to the establishment of Linguistics as a full Tripos subject). I am responsible for the undergraduate Linguistics admissions interviews and undergraduates’ progress in Linguistics and MML (PIB, YA).

As Fellow and Director of Studies, I support our undergraduate students in their overall Cambridge progress, both intellectual and personal. I work closely with another MML DoS at Queens’ so that our undergraduates maintain optimal well-being at university and can gain assistance in whatever capacity necessary for them to excel at Queens’. As well as being a point of call for Queens’ undergraduate Linguistics and MML students in terms of pastoral care, I meet with these students twice a term to discuss their academic progress. I also often offer Queens’ students one-to-one supervisions in order to maximise constructive feedback on their essays and help guide and improve their writing skills –particularly critical for Freshers, and aim to develop a solid understanding of the material presented in lectures and their reading. Moreover, I organise and host regular seminars and conferences at Queens’ on topics relating to Romance and Greek diachronic and dialectal syntax, including the 2015 Colloquium in honour of Hispanicist and Queens’ Life Fellow, Professor Christopher Pountain. For more information on the type of linguistics activities Queens’ students enjoy privileged access, see: www.queens.cam.ac.uk/applying-here/undergraduates/subjects/linguistics

For applicants

I recommend that anyone thinking of applying for MML in Cambridge have a good look at the information and advice provided on the Faculty website: http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/applying. In addition to this, the best way to prepare is to read and reflect on your language(s). For more inspiration see here: http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/applying/courses/linguistics

Research

I am fascinated by both synchronic and diachronic syntax of the Romance languages and Greek, and, more specifically, the relationship between syntactic change and acquisition, language contact, micro-variation and phylogenies. I enjoy taking novel linguistic data and applying a robust generative (Chomskyan) analysis to understand the syntactic underpinnings of language and the mechanisms behind language change. Currently, my main areas of research are word order related phenomena in 13th Century Spanish and Romeyka both projects challenging my empirical skills to the maximum since the former is a dead language and the latter an endangered one. You can read more about my research www.romeyka.org/ioanna/.

Department

Within the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, I lecture the core Spanish IA paper and part IB and part II papers on Hispanic linguistics as well as Faculty papers on the comparative linguistics of the Romance languages. I supervise MML YAP projects as well as Linguistics Undergraduate Dissertations, which are often turned into published articles. I also teach seminars for the MPhil in Linguistics and supervise numerous PhD Students both at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese as well as the Linguistics Department. In the recent past I have acted as Co-ordinator of Portuguese Undergraduate Studies and Chair of PIA Exams.

College
01223 331943
Subjects
Position
  • Official Fellow
  • Director of Studies in Linguistics and Modern and Medieval Languages (PIB and YA)
  • Postgraduate Tutor (LT & ET 2022)