Dr. Florence Bonacina-Pugh is Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Language Education as well as co-leader of the Research Hub in Languages, Interculturality and Literacies in the Moray House School of Education and Sports, at The University of Edinburgh. She was Programme Director of the MSc Language Education from 2016 to 2019, when she contributed to the development of the Languages Strategy of the School and led the programme through its quinquennial review in collaboration with the Languages team.

Dr. Florence Bonacina-Pugh works in the field of Sociolinguistics and specialises in the study of Language Policy and Practices, and Multilingualism in education. Following a Post-Doctoral Fellowship awarded by the ESRC, Bonacina-Pugh went on to develop what she calls “language policy as practice” (e.g. Bonacina-Pugh 2012, 2020; Bonacina-Pugh et al. 2021; Chen and Bonacina-Pugh, 2021), which has then been investigated in many educational contexts. She has also extensively published on issues of language choice in multilingual education and was recently invited to lead a state-of-the-art review on translanguaging in education for Language Teaching (Bonacina-Pugh et al. in press). She has conducted research in mainstream schools with newly arrived migrants, in heritage/community schools, and most recently in Higher Education. Her recent work can be found in international journals such as Language Policy; The International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism; Language and Education; The Applied Linguistics Review; and Language Teaching.

Dr. Florence Bonacina-Pugh is a co-founder and co-chair of the Language Policy Special Interest Group of the British Association of Applied Linguistics and co-organises its annual conference: The Language Policy Forum. She reviews regularly book proposals and grant proposals, as well as articles in international journals. She acts as external examiner for PhD theses in the UK and abroad.

Florence is also a fully trained teacher of French as a foreign language and has taught young learners as well as adults in various institutions in the UK for 10 years. She is passionate about knowledge exchange and has founded “Les Petiots d’ Edimbourg”, a vibrant French Saturday club for French and English bilingual young learners in Edinburgh and its surroundings. 

Qualifications:

• Ph.D. in Linguistics, The University of Edinburgh.
• MSc. in Applied Linguistics, The University of Edinburgh.
• MSc. in Language Teaching, Université de la Sorbonne III (France).
• BA Hons in Linguistics, Université de la Sorbonne IV (France).

• Language Policy and Language-in-Education Policy
• Translanguaging
• Multilingualism from a sociolinguistic perspective
• Internationalisation of Higher Education
• Community language education
• Citizenship and identity

I am fascinated by interactional data of any sorts and often use an ethnomethodological lens to understand order and fluidity in social action.

• Language policy and practice in the multilingual university. PI. Seedcorn Funding. With Co-I Dr. Elisabeth Barakos and RA Dr. Qi Chen.
• Scot or Not? Investigating conceptualizations of identity and citizenship in a referendum context. With Dr. Mairin Hennebry. Funded by Hong Kong University Faculty of Education Research Fund.
• Language-in-education policy in migratory contexts; funded by the ESRC (PTA-026-27-2638)
• A Conversation Analytic approach to 'practiced language policies': the example of an induction classroom for newly-arrived immigrant children in France; funded by the ESRC (PTA-031-2006-00426)
• Classroom code-switching in a French complementary school in Scotland; funded by the British Council (Entente Cordiale scheme)

• Language and the Learner
• Teaching Languages to Young Learners (Course Organiser)
• Bilingual Education (Lecturer)
• Dissertation supeprvisor

I am happy to supervise MSc and PhD students in the areas of:

• • Language in education policy and family language policy
  • Translanguaging in the (language) classroom
  • Multilingualism / linguistic diversity in educational contexts
  • Community language education
  • Internationalisation of Higher Education