I am a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, French and German Philology at the University of Vigo (2019-), with certification to become a Professor, and an active member of the Language Variation and Textual Categorisation research group (LVTC, since 2006). At UVigo, I held two Senior Research Fellowships: Distinguished Research Fellow (2017) and Research Fellow Ramón y Cajal (2012-2017). Previously, I held a full-time position as Lecturer in English Language in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Manchester (2007-2012), where I am affiliated as an Honorary Research Fellow since 2017.
My primary research interest lies in the history of the English language, particularly historical sociolinguistics from 1500 to 1900. I specialise in eighteenth-century normative linguistics (grammar writing tradition, pronouncing dictionaries, letter-writing manuals) and corpus linguistics (compilation and annotation of corpora, databases and digital editions).
I am currently researching letter-writing practices and social networks in the late Georgian period from a sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic perspective. My previous studies have explored preposition stranding, historical register variation, the double object construction, the apostrophe, John Dryden’s language, paratext in eighteenth-century grammar books, amongst others.
I have acted as Principal Investigator or Co-PI on several projects, including Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers c.1740-c.1850 (2019-2023, Manchester-Vigo-York), Image to Text (2011-2019, Manchester-Vigo), The Art of Writing English: A Corpus of Schoolchildren’s Writings (2014-2016, Vigo-Liverpool) and Eighteenth-Century English Grammars Database (2008-2010, Manchester-Las Palmas de Gran Canaria). Additionally, I have contributed to Paratext in 18th-century Grammars of English: Language and Society (2012-2015, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria-Vigo) and the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology Database (2014-2016, Sheffield-Vigo). I co-coordinate the ARCHER Consortium since 2008 (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers) and I have also been member of the Advisory Board of the GerManC project (2006-2007, Manchester).
For more information, see https://lvtc.uvigo.es/people/nuriayb