Ghil'ad Zuckermann

After studying at the United World College of the Adriatic (Collegio del Mondo Unito dell'Adriatico; Duino, Trieste) and performing several years of military service (1989-1993), he was selected for the Adi Lautman Interdisciplinary Programme for Outstanding Students of Tel Aviv University, where he studied philosophy, psychology, classics, literature, law and mathematics, and specialized in linguistics, receiving his MA (97%, summa cum laude) from the Department of Linguistics in 1997. As Scatcherd European Scholar of the University of Oxford and Denise Skinner Graduate Scholar of St Hugh's College, Oxford, he gained his DPhil (Oxon) in 2000.

Zuckermann has been Gulbenkian Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge, and has been affiliated with the Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Studies, University of Cambridge. He has taught various undergraduate and graduate courses at different universities in the UK, USA, Singapore and Israel. He has been research fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation's Study and Conference Center (Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy), Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (University of Texas at Austin), Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (Institute for Advanced Study, La Trobe University) and Kokuritu Kokugo Kenkyuuzyo (National Language Research Institute, Tokyo). He has held a range of fellowships and scholarships, including a British Academy Research Grant, Memorial Foundation of Jewish Culture Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harold Hyam Wingate Scholarship, British Chevening Scholarship and DAAD.

He has published in English, Israeli ('Ivrit'), Italian, Yiddish, Spanish, German and Russian. His book Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew came out with Palgrave Macmillan in 2003, and the bestseller Israelit Safa Yafa (Israeli, a Beautiful Language) was published by Am Oved in 2008.

Ghil'ad Zuckermann’s Specialties:

Language, culture and identity, historical linguistics, lexicology, language revival and survival (Hebrew, Maori, Aboriginal, indigenous languages), English as the world`s language, etymology, the power of the word in Islam, Christianity and Judaism, hybrid and mixed languages, Yiddish and Zionism, Israeli tongue, society and religion, borrowing, language planning, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, Jewish civilisation, Mandarin, Jaspanese, Turkish, Italian, Icelandic, Arabic, Estonian.

Ghil'ad Zuckermann’s Experience

Associate Professor

The University of Queensland

(Educational Institution; Research industry)

January 2007 — Present (2 years 7 months)
Research Fellow

La Trobe University

(Educational Institution; 1001-5000 employees; Higher Education industry)

2004 — 2006 (2 years)
Gulbenkian Research Fellow

Churchill College, University of Cambridge

(Research industry)

2000 — 2004 (4 years)
Senior Lecturer

Kidum

(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Education Management industry)

1993 — 1997 (4 years)
Senior Lecturer

Kidum Test Preparations Ltd.

(Research industry)

1993 — 1996 (3 years)
Commander

Israel Defense Forces

(Government Agency; 10,001 or more employees; Military industry)

1989 — 1993 (4 years)