Speaker Biography

Enric Llurda is professor of Applied Linguistics at Universitat de Lleida, in the bilingual region of Catalonia (Spain). He is a competent user of Catalan, Spanish and English, and an intermediate speaker of French. His upbringing in a Catalan-speaking environment, and his trajectory as a teacher of Catalan, Spanish and English, have informed his approach to applied linguistics with respect to multilingualism, language teaching, language identity, and language policy.

His main areas of research are non-native language teachers and native-speakerism, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and multilingualism and internationalisation of higher education. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, as well as 2 edited and 3 co-authored books. One of his edited volumes (Non-Native Language Teachers: Perceptions, challenges and contributions to the profession. Springer, 2005) has been widely cited, and was translated into Arabic in 2012. He is also a member of the scientific board of 7 applied linguistics journals and 2 book series.

He has participated in several research and innovation projects, and has been the leader of 2 projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2015-67769-P from 2016 to 2019; PID2019-107451GB-I00 from 2020 to 2023). The first investigated the effect of applying a plurilingual+ELF approach in a Business English course in comparison to a more traditional monolingual native-oriented methodology, whereas the second dealt with the development of disciplinary literacies in English as a lingua franca in English-medium university courses in Catalonia. He also coordinated the research group Cercle de Lingüística Aplicada – UdL (www.cla.udl.cat) from 2014 to 2022, which earned the recognition by the Catalan research funding agency as one of the top research groups in the country.

He has conducted long-term research stays in Canada (University of Alberta), Sweden (Högskolan i Gävle), USA (Southern Illinois University) and UK (University of Southampton), plus several other short-term stays, and he has been a guest lecturer at over 20 universities in 4 different continents. He has also presented in several international conferences, and has been a keynote speaker at conferences in Europe, Asia, America and Oceania.

The social impact of his work is visible through two types of actions. The first one as co-author of the online platform for self-access to English learning materials: Quantum LEAP: Learning English for Academic Purposes. The second is his involvement in teacher training activities. The most recent action is a seminar involving training and orientation for a pedagogy of multilingualism to foreign language teachers at a primary school in Lleida.

His teaching ranges from undergraduate courses on applied linguistics, English as a global language and second language acquisition to graduate modules on intercultural communication and research methodology. To the present date, Enric Llurda has successfully supervised 3 PhDs to completion, and is currently supervising 4 PhD students.

He is currently working on teacher trainees’ language ideology in relation to ELF and translanguaging. And he is now in the process of editing a book on deconstructing the native speaker construct (Routledge) which should be available in late 2024 or early 2025.