Pro-Vice-Chancellor - International
Professor Rebecca Hughes
Professor Rebecca Hughes was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor International at the University of Sheffield in March 2011. In this role, Rebecca is working to further develop the University´s reputation for research and teaching of the highest international quality. She is also promoting links between local and international communities.
Rebecca joined the University of Sheffield from the University of Nottingham where she was the Chair in Applied Linguistics. There, Rebecca has helped set up campuses in Malaysia and China and led the creation of the first department delivering UK degrees wholly in China.
Professor Hughes has also published widely on her personal research interest of spoken language and given presentations on this topic at a number of international conferences in countries such as China, Japan and New York. She has also regularly contributed to debates surrounding the globalised Higher Education system in forums such as the OECD and the British Council where she brings the combination of a 20 year career working in University internationalisation and an Applied Linguistics researcher to issues of language policy.
During her career she has previously been Director of Nottingham´s Centre for English Language Education, a Head of School, Vice-Dean, Chair of Academic Language Services Strategy Group, Chair of Collaborative Courses Committee and a member of the quality assurance and project steering groups of both the Malaysia and China campuses of the University of Nottingham.
Rebecca holds undergraduate and postgraduate degree from the University of Oxford. Her interest in applied linguistics began when she was a child, partly due to her father who was a writer himself. She says: "The way you see the world is very often coloured by language and that was something I became fascinated by."
Publications:
Hughes, R. (2008). `Internationalisation of Higher Education and Language Policy: Questions of Quality and Equity´. Higher Education Management and Policy. Volume 20, No. 1. 111—128.
Hughes, R. (2010). `Materials to develop the skill of speaking´. In N. Harwood (ed.) Materials in ELT: Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp207—24.
Hughes, R. (2010). `What can a corpus tell us about grammar teaching materials?´ In: M. McCarthy and A. O´Keefe (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics. London: Routledge. Pp401—412.
Hughes, R. (2010). `Researching Speaking´. In: B. Paltridge and A. Phakiti (Eds.) Continuum Companion to Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. London: Continuum. Pp 145—159.
Hughes, R. (2010). `Excellence in the Plural´. Times Higher Education. 5th November.
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=414090§ioncode=26
Hughes, R. (forthcoming) `Strategies for managing and leading an academic staff in multiple countries´. In J. Lane and K. Kinser (eds.) The Multi-National University: Administration, Governance, and Leadership of International Branch Campuses.
Hughes, R. and Szczepeck-Reed, B. Learning About Speech by Experiment: Issues in the Investigation of Spontaneous Talk within the Experimental Research Paradigm Applied Linguistics (2011) 32(2): 197-214
Hughes, R. (under consideration) `International Collaborations and the Effects of International Rankings´. Going Global: the landscape for policy makers and practitioners in tertiary education. In: M. Stiasny and T. Gore (eds). British Council/Emerald Publishing.