Professor Sam Wolfe

Professor Sam Wolfe

Associate College Lecturer in Linguistics

Biography

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.

Research Interests

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.