About
Join OED editors and guest speakers for a discussion where they will uncover a thousand years of the English language.

This session will cover:

• Overview of University College London's 'From Old English to World Englishes' project
• How the work of OED's historical lexicographers complements the work of historical linguists
• How linguists and lexicographers can contribute to society's knowledge of how the language has evolved from Old English to Middle English to Modern English
• How studying the history of English helps us understand why the words we use look or sound the way they do, why English has borrowed so extensively from other languages, and why it has many different varieties spoken in different parts of the world
• Several examples of words and senses recorded in the OED
• Q&A time

The event will be recorded for those who can’t attend the live session or would like to watch it again at a later date.

Thu, 23 October, 05:00 – 06:30 PM BST (UTC +1)
12:00 PM (EDT, UTC -4) | 09:00 AM, PDT (UTC -7) | 06:00 PM (CEST, UTC +2) | 06:00 PM (SAST, UTC +2)
When
Thursday, October 23, 2025 · 5:00 p.m. London (UTC +1:00)
Presenters
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Dr Danica Salazar (panel chair)
Executive Editor for World Englishes, Oxford University Press
I am Executive Editor for World Englishes for Oxford Languages, where I lead editorial projects for world varieties of English, as well as research and write World English entries for the Oxford English Dictionary. I publish and lecture regularly on lexicography, phraseology, World Englishes and Spanish- and English-language teaching. I am the author of Lexical Bundles in Native and Non-native Scientific Writing (2014), co-editor of Biomedical English: A Corpus-based Approach (2013), and co-author of several language textbooks for learners of Spanish.
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Fiona McPherson
Senior Editor, OED New Words Team, Oxford University Press
I have worked on the OED for over 20 years, initially working as part of the Revision team before moving on to New Words. As an undergraduate, I studied English Language and Literature at the University of Glasgow, and my first taste of lexicography came after graduation when I began work for Chambers Dictionaries in Edinburgh on their 21st Century Dictionary. In addition to adding new words to the OED, I regularly undertake media and publicity work on behalf of the dictionary.
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Dr Guyanne Wilson
Quirk Lecturer in English Linguistics, Department of English Language and Literature, University College London
I joined UCL as Quirk Lecturer in English Linguistics in 2022. My primary research interest is the sociolinguistics of World Englishes, particularly in the attitudes and ideologies surrounding their use. I'm also interested in how new norms develop in World Englishes, how these norms change over time, the implications of new norms for education, and how speakers and writers employ emerging norms to perform identity, particularly in diaspora and in online settings. My current research looks at the language of early warnings in Small Island Developing Nations in the Caribbean. My favourite part of my work as a researcher involves meeting users of the varieties I work with, and I've carried out ethnographic, interview, and survey based research in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Grenada, Jamaica, Nigeria, Ghana, and Uganda, where I also trained junior researchers in data collection and analysis. I was a major contributor to the compilation and annotation of the Trinidad and Tobago and Ugandan components of the International Corpus of English (ICE), and helped prepare the manual for ICE Uganda. I am the founder of the research network New Englishes, New Methods, which was funded by the German Research Council from 2018-2022.

I enjoy teaching learners at all levels, and taught at primary and secondary level before entering tertiary education teaching.

I was awarded a national scholarship (open) from the Government of Trinidad and Tobago in 2002, which allowed me to pursue my undergraduate degree at King's College, London, and was then awarded a Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship to pursue my MPhil at the University of Cambridge. After a period of national service to Trinidad and Tobago, in which I worked as a teacher and writer, I pursued a PhD at the University of Muenster, and then completed a post-doctoral dissertation at the Ruhr University Bochum in 2022.

I am a member of the International Association of World Englishes, the International Society for the Linguistics of English, and the Society for Caribbean Linguistics and currently serve on the editorial board of the journal English World-Wide.
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Dr Kathryn Allan
Associate Professor in the History of the English Language, Department of English Language and Literature, University College London
I am an Associate Professor in the History of English, and have been at UCL since 2008. I completed my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the English Language department at the University of Glasgow, where I also worked for several years as a part-time research assistant on the Historical Thesaurus of English, published on paper as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary; I am now a member of the Advisory Board to the project. From 2004–2008 I was a lecturer at the University of Salford, where I was Programme Leader for the BA in English Language and Linguistics. I am currently a member of Council of the Philological Society, Chair of the Nominating Committee for the International Society for the Linguistics of English, and an Affiliate of the Angus McIntosh Centre for Historical Linguistics.
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Dr Amy Faulkner
Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature, Department of English Language and Literature, University College London
I joined the English Department at UCL in 2020 as an Associate Lecturer (Teaching); as of August 2024, I have been a Lecturer in Old and Middle English Literature. My primary research interest is Old English literature, in particular the group of translations attributed to Alfred the Great. I teach a range of topics related to Old and Middle English language and literature, from "Beowulf" to Chaucer. Before joining UCL I taught at the University of Oxford, where I had completed my DPhil, the University of Cambridge and Royal Holloway, University of London.
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Dr Mohamed Eric Lacey
Editor, OED General Editorial Group, Oxford University Press
I joined the OED’s research team after working as an historical linguist for over a decade. In that time I taught and researched in the disciplines of English Language, Linguistics, English Literature and History at the University of Winchester, and before that at Department of English at University College London. In addition to publications on Old English, medieval falconry, cognitive semantics and the study of the history of language, I was a consultant for the video game Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, its expansion Dawn of Ragnarök and the augmented reality 878 AD attraction in Winchester.
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