Dr. Adrian Holliday
is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Canterbury Christ Church University, where he supervises doctoral research in the critical sociology of language education and intercultural communication. He began his career as a British Council teacher in Iran in the 1970s. During the 1980s he setup the English for Specific Purpose centre at Damascus University, Syria, and was involved in a national curriculum project in Egypt to develop methodologies for teaching large university classes. He has published a number of books that lead the field in the areas of appropriate methodology, the cultural politics of so-labelled ‘native- vs. ‘non-native speaker’ teachers, intercultural communication, and qualitative research methods. His recent work concerns a critique of national cultural stereotypes and the creative contribution that international university students and language learners bring from their often unrecognised existing cultural experience. This work impacts on the relationship between language learning and culture, intercultural awareness training, and internationalisation in higher education. It has led to conference presentations, curriculum development and consultancy work in China, India, The Middle East, Mexico and the European Union.