Dr Eleni Mariou

School of Education
Assistant Professor in Language Education

Contact details

Address
School of Education
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Eleni Mariou is the Programme Director of the MSc TESOL Education.

Before joining the School of Education in 2014, Eleni worked as a Teaching Fellow in TESOL at the University of Edinburgh, and also was an Associate Tutor on the distance-learning MA in Applied Linguistics and TESOL programme at the University of Leicester for several years. Eleni has extensive experience teaching English for General, Academic and Specific purposes in the UK and Greece. She has also been involved in General Education teacher training programmes, working as an assessor and research associate, and has previously held a temporary lecturing post at Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, teaching on the BEd Primary Education programme.

Her research interests are situated in the areas of multilingualism in educational and social contexts, language education, language ideology and discourse, and the cultural and political implications of English as an International Language. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

Qualifications

  • PhD in Sociolinguistics (University of Birmingham)
  • MA Education (University of Birmingham)
  • BA English Language Studies (University of Central Lancashire)
  • Cambridge DELTA
  • PgCert in Academic Practice (University of Edinburgh)

Teaching

  • Second Language Teaching Methodology, Module Lead (MSc TESOL  Education)  
  • Research Methods in Education (Co-Lead) 
  • Language, Discourse and Society (MSc TESOL Education)

Postgraduate supervision

Eleni supervises postgraduate research students including:

Current students

Jenny Lewin-Jones: Internationalization in HE

Sarah Knee: Multilingual Literacy Learning of Nepalese Children Growing up in the UK

Rachel Hu: An Ethnographic Study of Entrepreneurial Practices in Everyday Transnational Business Operations: Case Studies of Chinese Diasporic Small Transnational Enterprises in Birmingham, United Kingdom 

Marilena Richards: EAL provision: policy and practice in Secondary school settings

Completed students

Colin Isham: Practitioner perspectives on bilingual pupils’ use and learning of their home language in English primary schools

Research

Research interests

  • Multilingualism in educational and social contexts 
  • Language ideology and discourse 
  • Cultural and political implications of English as an International Language 
  • Language education 

Project: Social Inclusion for migrant women: non-formal education practice for language and literacy development (ESRC IAA).

Co-Investigator 'Multilingualism for Social Inclusion in the European Classroom' EuniWell Funded Project 2020-2021, University of Birmingham, University of Leiden, University of Firenze and University of Köln. PI: Melanie Uth, University of Cologne.

The changing language and literacy landscapes of Brazilian universities: English in policy development and in practice. 2018-2019

Publications

Mariou, E. (2020) Narratives about 'homeland', heritage, languages and belonging : a case of 'return' migration. Linguistics and Education, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2019.100793

Mariou, E., Bonacina-Pugh, F., Martin, D., Martin-Jones, M. (2016) Researching language-in-education in diverse, twenty-first century settings. Language and Education, 30 (2): 95-105 (Special Issue) DOI: 10.1080/09500782.2015.1103256

Mariou, E. (2017) ‘My language, my mother tongue’: Competing language ideologies and linguistic diversity among speakers of standard and non-standard varieties, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 20 (1), pp.20-33 

Galloway, N. and Mariou, E. (2014). Global Englishes. In Cutting, J. and Farr, F. (Eds.) Language in Context for TESOL. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Mariou, E. (2012) Pontian Greek adolescents: the negotiation of identities in an urban context in northern Greece. In Martin-Jones, M. and Gardner, S. (Eds.) Multilingualism, Discourse and Ethnography. New York: Routledge. pp. 67-81. 

Mariou, E. (2011) The importance of the linguistic capital in contextualised identity negotiation of ‘repatriated’ Pontian Greeks from the former U.S.S.R. In Muñoz-Basols, J. & David, M. (eds.) Defining and Re-defining Diapora: From Theory to Reality. Oxford: Inter-disciplinary Press. pp. 85-104. 

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