 Adrian Holliday is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church University in the Department of English & Language Studies. He is also Head of the Graduate School where he coordinates research degrees across the university. He also directs the PhD in Applied Linguistics. Adrian has a BSc in Sociology (London University) from Portsmouth Polytechnic, 1971. He did a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, specializing in social science, 1972, and taught English, Sociology and Economics for a year at North Romford Comprehensive School near London. Between 1973 and 1979 he worked for the British Council in Iran, first teaching English in Tehran and then managing an English language programme for oil company personnel in Ahwaz. In 1980 he went to Damascus University, Syria, to set up an English for specific purposes language centre, which is now a thriving institution. This was the first of two appointments as a British Council advisor on a British-funded aid project. The second was from 1985 to 1990 at the Centre for Developing English Language Teaching, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. This was a national project for developing the language curriculum for pre-service teacher education at 18 universities. He aquired his PhD at Lancaster University in 1991, supervised by Dick Allwright and Mike Breen. This involved an ethnographic study of the relationship between Egyptian, British and American lecturers of large university classes within the context of an international aid project. During the 1990s he was Chair of Accreditation, and then Chair, of BATQI (The British Association of TESOL Qualifying Institutions). He was instrumental in designing the first scheme to accredit TESOL certificate, diploma and masters programmes in British universities and private sector language schools within a common framework.
While at Christ Church he has developed research interests in the way in which international English language education has impacted on the cultural realities of educators and students. This has led him in several complementary directions. Developing a non-essentialist approach to intercultural communication has helped him to deconstruct the politics of Self and Other which relates to the cultural chauvinism, or culturism, implicit in the imperialism of the teaching of English. To help understand what goes on between educators and students, he has developed an interest in critical qualitative research. He is currently engaged in exploring how cultural chauvinism underpins the broader ways in which we see and deal with each other in an uneven world. Friends, influences and contacts Mehri Honarbin-Holliday has been a major recent influence through the way she integrates her work as a sculptural ceramicist and video artist with ethnography of hidden cultures. This is demonstrated in her recent book, Becoming Visible in Iran, IB Tauris 2009. Shabnam Holliday has used a discourse approach to modern Iranian politics in her book, Defining Iran, Ashgate 2011. |