Elena Ioannidou is a sociolinguist and an Αssociate Professor in Language Education at the Department of Education, University of Cyprus. She holds a BA (Ed) in Education (University of Cyprus), an MA in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching (University of Southampton, UK) and a PhD in Sociolinguistics and Education (University of Southampton, UK). She has worked as a Lecturer and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Education, University of Cyprus (2009-2019), and as a postdoctoral fellow (2005-2006) and a Research Associate (2007-2009) at the Centre for Applied Language Research at the University of Southampton. Her research interests focus on the concept of a social theory of language, on language variation and multilingualism and on the interrelations of language and identity. Elena Ioannidou is a trained ethnographer, with a special interest on linguistic ethnography and on studying linguistic communities. Her theoretical grounding lies in the constructs of language as performance and on the interrelations of language choice and language values with larger social groupings such as linguistic communities and social networks.  She is also interested in the pedagogical dimension of language teaching, focusing on issues of literacy, genre-based education and increasing metalinguistic awareness to achieve functional and critical literacy across all ages. Her research projects have been funded by EU, Leventis foundation, the Ministry of Education of Cyprus and the University of Cyprus. She is a founding member of the Literacy Association of Cyprus and has been a board member of the Linguistic Society of Cyprus.

Projects (selected)

• Erasmus + PALM project (http://www.palm-edu.eu/en/) “Promoting authentic language acquisition in multilingual contexts”, Local coordinator for partner institution, (2016-2018)
• GRECO project “Retaining Greek in ‘Enclaved’ Communities: Greek as a mother tongue among Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus and Cunda Cretans in Turkey”, Funded by Leventis Foundation, Principal Investigator. (2014-2016)
• Prison Literacy Project, “Developing a Social Literacy Program among Prisoners in the Central Prison of Cyprus”, Internal Funding University of Cyprus, Principal Investigator/Coordinator (2014-2015)
• Professional Experience Program for Teachers of Greek L2 “Teaching Greek as a second language”, Funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture & the European Union, Coordinator (2011-2012)