Professor Sam Wolfe

I am Director of Studies for Linguistics at St John’s as well as being Director of Studies and a Tutorial Fellow of St Catherine's. Prior to taking up my current post, I held teaching and research positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester and Oxford, alongside a Visiting Professorship at the University of Padua. I hold a BA in Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics and an MPhil and PhD in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge.

The main focus of my research is on French and Gallo-Romance, though I have also published on the syntax of other Romance varieties. I am currently writing a monograph entitled Syntactic Change in French and co-editing a volume on connections between Germanic and Romance languages alongside a handbook-style treatment of the Verb Second property, entitled Rethinking Verb Second. A monograph on word order in Medieval Romance languages will appear shortly with OUP, entitled Verb Second in Medieval Romance.

Teaching and Access

I teach a broad range of papers within the Oxford course, including French language and linguistics at all levels, comparative Romance linguistics, historical linguistics and Italo-Romance linguistics. I am always keen to hear from prospective graduate students working on topics within synchronic or diachronic Romance morphosyntax.

I have interests in school governance and educational policy and am happy to participate in access and admissions initiatives both within Oxford and elsewhere. I am currently coordinating a national project to improve the number of care-leavers accessing Higher Education.