Rate My Professor Ingrid Piller

Ingrid Piller is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics within the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences at Macquarie University, Sydney. She concurrently holds the Alexander-von-Humboldt Professorship for “Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation across the Lifespan” at the University of Hamburg, Germany. As an applied sociolinguist, Piller's research specializations encompass intercultural communication, language learning, multilingualism, and bilingual education, particularly in the contexts of migration and globalization. She has published extensively, lectured internationally, and consulted widely on these topics, contributing significantly to the field of applied sociolinguistics.

Earlier in her career at Macquarie University, Piller served as Executive Director of the Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre from 2007 to 2010. She was Editor-in-Chief of the international sociolinguistics journal Multilingua from 2013 to 2022 and a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts from 2021 to 2024. A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, she has received major awards including the 2017 Prose Award in Language and Linguistics and the British Association for Applied Linguistics Book Prize for Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics (Oxford University Press, 2016). Her Language on the Move podcast earned the Australian Linguistic Society's 2025 Talkley Award. Key publications also feature Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction (Edinburgh University Press, third edition 2025), Life in a New Language (Oxford University Press, 2024), “Linguistic Diversity in a Time of Crisis: Language Challenges of the Covid-19 Pandemic” (Multilingua, 2020), and “Marking and Unmarking the (Non)native Speaker Through English Language Proficiency Requirements for University Admission” (Language in Society, 2024). Piller's work has profoundly influenced discussions on linguistic diversity, social justice, and language policy.