Erin Pretorius

I'm Dr Erin Pretorius, a linguist based at the University of the Western Cape, where I lecture in formal linguistics and pursue research at the intersection of syntax, variation, and linguistic justice. My scholarly work centres on the grammatical ecology of Kaaps - a marginalised language of South Africa whose structural richness and sociohistorical complexity remain under-researched. Through both theoretical and community-engaged inquiry, I aim to contribute to a more inclusive understanding of linguistic systems and the communities that shape them.

Since my appointment in 2017, I’ve built a coherent academic profile rooted in conceptual rigour, pedagogical innovation, and collaborative capacity-building. My teaching has involved extensive curriculum development across undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including the implementation of flipped learning models and the revitalisation of our formal linguistics stream. In parallel, my research has been supported by competitive funding (including NRF Thuthuka), featured in national and international forums, and anchored in the development of a corpus of spoken Kaaps.

As an autistic academic, I am someone who thrives on long periods of deep, structured, and reflective work. In reality, and not least because I am also the parent of a young child, work-life is often fast-paced, fragmented, and sensory-intense. These realities require constant calibration, and they are experiences that have sharpened my instinct for clarity and structure, and have made me intentional about the way I teach, lead, and sustain my scholarship. This site, which serves as a professional portfolio, offers curated evidence of my contributions across five core domains: learning and teaching, research, community engagement, institutional leadership, and professional leadership. It reflects not just the outputs of that work, but the values and working principles that shape it.