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You're listening to IOE Insights, the UCL Institute of Education podcast at University College London. This is Academia et al. The podcast for anyone and everyone figuring out life in academia. This is Academia et al. The podcast for early career academics. I am Zeinab El-Khateeb. I'm a lecturer in teacher education at the UCL Faculty of Education and Society. In this series of episodes, we are going to hear stories about academic journeys, achievements and legacy, which we hope will inspire you to embark on your own adventure as an early career researcher. Today, I'm delighted to welcome Professor Li Wei here in the studio with us. Professor Li Wei is the director and the Dean of UCL, IOE Faculty of Education and Society. He is also a chair in Applied Linguistics. His research expertise centers around different aspects of bilingualism and multilingualism. Professor Li Wei, thank you so much for joining us today, and welcome to the studio here with us. Thank you very much for the opportunity. Good to see you. Thank you. Firstly, it would be very helpful if you could provide the audience with an overview of your academic journey and progression to the present day. Thank you. Um, I'm not sure when I decided to be an academic. To be quite honest. In fact, I'm not sure I made that conscious choice to be an academic. I did feel when I was an undergraduate student that academia was an interesting place to work in, but I was never sure I would be suitable for academia. I studied English language and literature in China and had a teaching qualification to teach English as a foreign language, and I did that for a number of years. And then in nineteen eighty six, I came to Britain to teach Chinese to British undergraduate students. I was very happy to teach in the university, and I did a master's degree in English language studies as a part time student while I was teaching. Um, it was academia itself that triggered my interest in research, but I guess life in general was kind of more interesting to to me. And I had observed what looked to me an interesting phenomena that it was, uh, within, uh, somehow within three generations, an immigrant families dominant language could change from one to another completely. Um, I'm talking about immigrant and ethnic minority families. And there are many, many of them, of course. Uh, so, so we see that the grandparents remain largely monolingual in their own home and ethnic language. The parents generation is more bilingual, but when it comes to the children's generation, they become essentially English dominant. In fact, in some families, the children are no longer able to communicate fluently in their home and heritage language and have very little or low literacy, uh, in it. So right around, uh, that topic, I realized actually language maintenance and language shift was a major field of inquiry. So that was kind of the beginning of my academic career. I decided to study it in more detail for a PhD. Um, and that led to my entry into academic research. My, uh, you asked also about the journey so far. My interest, of course, changed a little over time. Um, as I was doing my doctoral research, uh, and as I understood what was happening in these, uh, immigrant and ethnic minority families and communities, so I was fascinated by the way bilinguals, uh, bilingual speakers alternate between different languages in interaction, how children acquire two or more languages simultaneously and how one would lose one language over time. And I was lucky enough to study these phenomena. And later on, you know, I got a lecturing position in speech language therapy department, teaching linguistics and bilingualism, and specializing in language development, bilingual children. And that's how my academic career started. I ventured a little further from that, but remained broadly within language contact, bilingualism, multilingualism as my main areas of interest, including bilingual education, language learning, and language education policy. Yeah, interesting. Bilingualism is very interesting topic. I was a bilingual child, by the way. I kept my Arabic and French going, but obviously when I came to English speaking contexts it's diluted. So I agree with you. You can't if you don't keep it in practice, it disappears, isn't it? Especially languages. Thank you. And and that leads us to the next question. Which professional Accomplishment or initiative you are most, um, significant and proud of. I'm sure you have laws, but which one is the most significant impact and that you're so proud of? Yeah, very interesting question. To me, it's less about the positions I've held or the awards or honors I've received, but more of what I've done that has had an impact on the field or the community broadly. So for me, I would say the most significant professional accomplishment or initiative was the launch of the International Symposium on Bilingualism and the journal International Journal of Bilingualism, both at the same time in nineteen ninety seven when I was in Newcastle. So twenty eight years ago. And in fact, I am just about to go to the next International Symposium on Bilingualism in Spain next week. So the conference I set up, uh, is still going strong, and the journal, uh, is still going strong, although I'm not no longer editing that, that journal. It created a truly global and truly interdisciplinary community because at the time, the main reason for me to really want to organize the event and the journal was I knew that there were people like me whose research interests very much was focused on bilingualism and multilingualism, but we were seen very much as the, uh, miscellaneous group of people with a special interest in bilingualism, multilingualism, but don't belong to the main, uh, or the core areas of either linguistics or sociolinguistics or education or, or psychology or anything that is more kind of standard and mainstream. So when you, when we went to conferences, uh, of, um, linguistics or sociology or educational psychology, we were always in that special interest group. Uh, so I wanted to organize something that for us, uh, for the people who are interested in very much focused on bilingualism, multilingualism, and lo behold, you know, we had, uh, hundreds of people interested in that from very different disciplinary background, all work together and shared our different ideas and methods and approaches. And that became a truly, uh, as I say, truly global and interdisciplinary community. And I'm really pleased that it's still going strong. Absolutely. Sounds amazing. Is that knowledge exchange knowledge, isn't it global and collaboration? Fascinating. I hope all goes well for you in Spain next week. The weather should be better. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. And actually, that leads us to the next question. Um, was there any individual who inspired your intellectual development and did their research focus or align with your research interests and doesn't have to be one individual. It can be sometimes multi more than one person. That's a, that's a really hard question. Uh, you're quite right. There are lots of different individuals who really inspired me, uh, in my career and in my work, um, and in life, um, at different times for different reasons. Um, so it's quite difficult to, to, to pin down one, to name one. But if, um, I was to just name one, it has to be my former doctoral supervisor, Lesley Milroy, uh, who, um, was a professor of sociolinguistics at Newcastle University, where I did my PhD. But she went on to to be a professor of linguistics at Michigan Ann Arbor before her retirement. It was her. It was the breadth of her knowledge and interest that absolutely impressed me. She. She knows so much about history. She knows so much about sociology and sociological theories, and never decided to just work in one narrow area from one single, uh, analytical perspective or theoretical perspective, but always open to ideas and, um, you know, bringing multidisciplinary perspectives into her research. She's, she's a dialectologist, she doesn't work on the topics that I'm interested in, but she really inspired me with the way she approached her research and also her commitment to, to research, uh, in a very real human, uh, being kind of way. She was interested in life and all the research topics that she worked on were really coming from real life, uh, interests. Um, and that's why, you know, I was also, uh, interested in the phenomena that I observe in my everyday life and in the communities that I work with. So, you know, the way of working was very much inspired by, by, by her and her ability to think otherwise and transcend boundaries, as I say, transcending boundaries of sociology, anthropology, and both using quantitative and qualitative methods to do her work was, uh, really, uh, impacting on my way of working, and the way she supervised me is almost exactly the way I am supervising my doctoral students. That's amazing to hear. I'm sure she was very inspiring. Even talking about her now inspires myself as well. Thank you so much. The last question what academic advice do you have for early career researchers? That could be staff and students. There is a lot going on in academia. I know lots of demands, lots of pressure on board, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's easy to say build your resilience and resilience is clearly what we need. But that, I'm afraid isn't enough. And also it's easier said than done, of course. Absolutely. You know, individuals have very different personal circumstances. Yeah. I think if I have anything to offer. I would say have a wider interest. Build your networks of support and have a good work life balance. Not in that kind of simplistic way, but really, if you have wider interests, beyond narrowly focused academic research and have wider networks and different networks of support, then you can achieve that balance in life much easier because, you know, you can talk to different people for about different things, for different purposes, and to be able to switch to different tasks fairly quickly. And I think that will help. That really would help. Um, you know, it's not just about building your individual resilience, but actually, you know, have that variety in life I think is, is important. Obviously having a good mentor or mentors would be very, very important. Um, you know, people who have gone through, uh, their career and their life and have a bit of experience and good advice to offer. I think, um, finding good mentors would be extremely helpful. Definitely. Is that flexibility and open minded approach, isn't it? That's a very, very interesting and many thanks for your advice. And that's what we're trying to do through this episode that to share, uh, academic journeys and achievements. So, you know, that's a network in itself. Many thanks for your advice. Thank you for the opportunity. Yes. Thank you very much, Professor Li Wei, for joining us today. It has been very informative. Thank you very much. Please follow the link in the show notes to find out more about Professor Li Wei's work as well as discovering more podcasts from the IOE. And if you like what you've heard, please give the podcast five star rating on Apple or Spotify. This will help us to reach more listeners who may also enjoy the podcast too. Thank you. I'm Zeinab and have a good day. Academia et al is brought to you by the IOE's Early Career Network and IOE Marketing and Communications. The podcast is presented by Zeinab El-Khateeb. The theme music was composed by Ronnie Zhu. Editing by Teresa Baker of UCL Educational Media. And Jason Ilagan is the executive producer of the IOE podcast. Thanks for listening. Search IOE Insights for more podcasts from the IOE.