Rate My Professor Diane Pecorari

Professor Diane Pecorari serves as Professor of TESOL in the School of Education at the University of Leeds. She obtained her BA and MA degrees from Ohio State University and her PhD in English applied linguistics from the University of Birmingham in 2001. Before joining Leeds, she held the position of Head of the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong from December 2016 to May 2023. Previously, she was Professor of English Linguistics and Head of the Department of Languages at Linnaeus University in Sweden from June 2012 to December 2016. Earlier in her career, she worked at Mälardalen University in Sweden, where she coordinated English programs and taught linguistics, academic writing, and professional communication. Pecorari has designed professional development courses for university teachers on topics such as preventing plagiarism, enhancing student writing skills, and effective teaching in English-medium classrooms.

Pecorari's research is rooted in educational linguistics, concentrating on English-medium instruction, English for academic purposes, academic vocabulary, intertextuality, source use, and plagiarism in second-language academic writing. She has also investigated predatory research outlets and conferences. As founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of English-Medium Instruction, co-edited with Hans Malmström, she contributes to advancing scholarship in this field. Her teaching focuses on the MA TESOL and MA TESOL Studies programmes. Key publications include Academic Writing and Plagiarism: A Linguistic Analysis (2008, Continuum), Introducing English for Academic Purposes (2015, co-authored with Maggie Charles), Student Plagiarism in Higher Education: Reflections on Teaching Practice (2018), Plagiarism in second-language writing (2014, Language Teaching, with Bojana Petrić), At the Crossroads of TESOL and English Medium Instruction (2018, TESOL Quarterly), and Plagiarism and English for academic purposes: A research agenda (2023, Language Teaching). With over 2,500 citations across 127 publications, her work has profoundly shaped understandings of plagiarism and academic literacy in second-language contexts. In November 2024, she delivered the Faculty Inaugural Lecture titled Plagiarism: Educational disorder or symptom?