Dr Christiana Themistocleous

BIOGRAPHY

Christiana Themistocleous is and Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Reading. Her current research explores multilingualism in borderline communities affected by conflict. Focusing on the case of Cyprus, and in particular the Greek-Cypriot/Turkish-Cypriot divide, Dr Themistocleous investigates how public spaces are socially constructed through the use of multilingual public signs. Using the Linguistic Landscape approach, she investigates identities and ideologies that relate to conflict, migration, displacement, tolerance and social cohesion. Also, using ethnographic approaches, she explores how social actors experience and perceive multilingual spaces. In her previous work, Dr Themistocleous studied the representation of multilingualism in the media, as well as social functions of code-switching, focusing on identity construction.