Profile
Dr. Brook Bolander joined the School of English at HKU in August 2015. Prior to that she was a Junior Fellow at FRIAS (Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies), Germany (2014–2015), and a doctoral- and post-doctoral assistant at the Universities of Zuerich (2012– 2014), Basel (2008–2012) and Bern (2007–2009), Switzerland. She completed her doctoral dissertation (summa cum laude) on language and power in blogs in 2012. In addition to research on computer-mediated communication (disagreements, agreements and power in blogs, identity on Facebook; and methodology in computer-mediated communication), she has worked on language-related inequalities in education (particularly on Basil Bernstein) and on global English, particularly on questions of language ideology and policy, and on the role and importance of English for the transnational Ismaili Muslim community. This latter research has led her to do ethnographic research in Pakistan and Tajikistan, as well as online, and in the British Library and National Archives, England, and to her position as a visiting fellow at the American University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (2013). A fourth major area of interest is in sociolinguistic theory and in applications of social theory to sociolinguistics. These four major areas are reflected both in her publications and teaching, for example, a 2013 monograph Language and Power in Blogs (John Benjamins) and a 2017 special issue (with Till Mostowlansky) on Language and Globalization in South and Central Asian Spaces (for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language). She is also the coordinator of the School's Language and Communication Programme, and on the editorial board of Pragmatics (2017). Together with Adam Jaworksi, she co-edits the book series Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics (Oxford University Press).
Language and religion
Qualitative research methods in sociolinguistics online and offline
“Community” in sociolinguistics
