Dr. Christine L. Mallinson
Professor · Tenured
Language, Literacy and Culture
College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
She/Her/Hers/Herself
About
I am Assistant Vice President for Research and Scholarly Impact at UMBC, where I am also Professor in the Language, Literacy & Culture Program and Affiliate Professor of Gender, Women’s + Sexuality Studies.
Research interests
My research explores how people across various segments of society use the English language to reflect culture and identity as well as to mark social boundaries and social divisions. I also study how language is a key mechanism in social justice efforts, and how interdisciplinary knowledge about language and linguistics can be applied to advance cultural and linguistic equity, especially in educational settings. I also study the importance of ethical principles in the study of language and how attention to unconscious and conscious linguistic biases can be used to address pervasive and durable social inequalities. Finally, I also study the intersection of language and technology specific to addressing issues of bias and misinformation.
Teaching interests
- Sociolinguistics
- English language change and variation
- language, gender, and sexuality
- language, culture, race, and ethnicity
- language and social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion
- language and education
- language, community, region, and place.
Education
- Ph D, Sociology — North Carolina State University (2006)
- MA, English — North Carolina State University (2002)
- BA, Sociology — University of North Carolina (2000)
Grants and Contracts
- NSF-CSIRO: Analyzing and Mitigating Sociolingustic AI-Bias (SLAB) in Natural Language Processing