Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

Stephen Pax Leonard is a Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Stephen has worked widely in the Arctic and semi-Arctic (Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands). His work engages broadly with the linguistics/anthropology/philosophy interface and his interests include: issues of language and identity (in small speech communities, in particular), language and ideology, the phenomenology of language and endangered languages. His doctoral research and first book focused on the issue of how a linguistic norm and social identity were established in early Iceland (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). Subsequently, he completed a British Academy funded project, documenting the minority language and spoken traditions of north-west Greenland. Stephen became the first linguist to live long-term with the Inugguit who live in the northern most permanently inhabited settlement in the world. His research has been widely covered on television and radio.