Theresa Lillis
Biographic Data
| ID | 1264364 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Theresa Lillis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Theresa |
| FAMILY NAME | Lillis |
| SIGNATURE | LILLIS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Open University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7584-3772 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 71 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 30 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The persistence of deficit orientations towards student writing across time and geolinguistic spaces
This article critically examines the persistence of deficit orientations towards student writing across time and geolinguistic contexts. Drawing on the Academic Literacies theoretical framework, we interrogate how the documented ‘gap’ or distance between student-writers and dominant academic conventions continues to be constructed as deficit, despite decades of critique. We revisit two longitudinal studies conducted at parallel historical moments…
‘Write Right About Me’
In this paper we outline a multi-agency collaborative project which focuses on a key concern: the absence of the voices of care-experienced children and young people in records written about them. The Aberdeen, Scotland based project, WRAM Write Right About me, took place over three years involving regular interprofessional meetings – from social work, health, education, policing, housing, youth justice– and collaboration with the Lead Investigat…
Direct quotations in social work writing
Writing comprises a core area of social work as a substantial amount of time is spent on producing case notes, assessment reports, and other required documentation in order to progress cases; however, little research has been carried out on social workers’ writing and, in particular, the specific discursive and rhetorical devices employed to create effective texts. One rhetorical device often employed in order to include the voices of service use…
Who is the ‘I’? An exploration of social work professional written discourse and implications for social work education
This paper brings together two areas of importance to social work education, professional identity and professional writing; identity is often viewed as central to social work practice and education, whilst writing as marginal.However, given that social work is a 'writing intensive' profession, writing is a key site of the enactment of professional identity and practice, meriting significant attention.Using the notion of 'voice' this paper explor…
Cerrando la brecha entre texto y contexto en la investigación sobre la escritura académica
Abordar la escritura académica desde una perspectiva contextualista sigue siendo una preocupación fundamental en los proyectos de investigación que tienen como objetivo explorar la naturaleza de la escritura —¿qué es la “escritura académica”?— y las consecuencias de una configuración específica de la escritura académica —¿quién participa en la escritura académica y bajo qué condiciones?—. Este artículo tiene dos objetivos: 1) resumir los argument…
Multilingualism in academic writing for publication
We are living in an era characterized by multilingualism, global mobility, superdiversity (Blommaert, 2010), and digital communications. Mobility and multilingualism, however, have long characterized most geolinguistic contexts, including those where monolingual ideologies have influenced the formation of contemporary nation states (Cenoz, 2013). As language is a pillar of both curriculum and instruction, in many academic spaces around the world …
Professional written voice “in flux”
Contemporary professional social work can be characterised by increased textualisation (after Iedema and Scheeres 2003) with written texts mediating most action. At the same time, writing, as a key dimension to social workers’ practice and labour, is often institutionally unacknowledged, becoming visible primarily when identified as a “problem.” This paper draws on a three year nationally funded UK-based research project to offer a situated accou…
Manifesto
Buscamos discutir alguns pressupostos sobre o uso do inglês como "língua franca" em contextos acadêmico-científicos, identificar o impacto destes pressupostos nas trajetórias de produção e recepção de conhecimentos, e legitimar o uso de múltiplas línguas para a troca acadêmica transnacional. Propomos dez princípios: o uso do inglês quanto "língua franca" acadêmico-científica não sempre promove a inclusão; uma suposta "língua franca" acadêmicocien…
English and/or Russian medium publications? A case study exploring academic research writing in contemporary Russian academia
El enfoque de literacidades académicas
En este artículo, desde su implicación temprana en el campo de investigación y práctica conocido como literacidades académicas, la investigadora británica Theresa Lillis reconstruye el contexto en el que surge dicho campo, define sus principales intereses de indagación y enseñanza, y resume sus contribuciones, durante veinte años, a la comprensión de la escritura académica en el Reino Unido y otros países. Lillis encuadra históricamente, en un co…
Time, the Written Record, and Professional Practice
Drawing on a three-year ethnographically oriented study exploring contemporary professional social work writing, this article focuses on a key concern: the amount of time taken up with writing, or “paperwork.” We explore the relationship between time and professional social work writing in three key ways: (a) as a discrete, measurable phenomenon—how much time is spent on writing? (b) as a textual dimension to social work writing—how do institutio…
Resistir regímenes de evaluación en el estudio del escribir
Este artículo se enfoca en el imaginario (Castoriadis, 1987) predominante en la investigación sobre el escribir y se pregunta, en particular, cómo los regímenes de evaluación ejercen orientaciones analíticas sobre este fenómeno. El artículo retoma algunos extractos de tres proyectos de investigación: uno sobre el escribir académico de los estudiantes (Lillis, 2001); otro sobre el escribir de los académicos para la publicación (Lillis y Curry, 201…
Global Academic Publishing
Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories
Drawing on a text-oriented action research ethnography of the writing practices of UK-based social workers, this paper focuses on a key but problematic aspect of everyday, professional textual practice – the production of “case notes.” Using data drawn from interviews, workshops, texts and observation, the paper locates case notes within social work everyday practice and explores the entextualization of three distinct case notes. The heuristic of
Introduction
The politics of English, language and uptake
Drawing on 95 text histories from a longitudinal project on writing for publication in 4 national contexts, this article analyses the language ideologies enacted in referees’ and editors’ comments on articles submitted for publication in English-medium ‘international’ journals. It considers how orientations to ‘English’, ‘language’ and ‘language work’ are enacted in practices of reviewer uptake and the consequences of such practices for knowledge…
Baal/CUP Seminars 2013 / Text Trajectories – Developing dynamic approaches to textual analysis
This seminar took place on 19 April, 2013 at the Centre for Language and Communication, Faculty of Language and Education Studies, The Open University. The seminar was coordinated by Janet Maybin and Theresa Lillis and there were 28 participants, including four postgraduate students, from universities in Britain, Belgium and South Africa
Resonances, Resistances and Relations
Introduction to the thematic issue
Academic Publishing and Presenting in a Global Context
The sociolinguistics of writing in a global context
In this paper, we argue that writing has largely been ignored as a significant empirical object of study in sociolinguistics. Pointing to the consequences of the specific ways in which writing has been positioned historically within sociolinguistics, we discuss the need to re-imagine writing as an object of study and problematize the dominant lenses through which writing is understood and analyzed. We draw on recent work to illustrate three key c…
Legitimizing dialogue as textual and ideological goal in academic writing for assessment and publication
The semiotic world that we inhabit (within and outside the academy) is fast changing in terms of the resources that are used and the practices in which many engage. Yet the institutional norms governing highly consequential academic texts – students’ texts assessed as part of their disciplinary-based activity and scholars’ papers submitted for publication – lack engagement with this array of resources and, epistemologically, continue to drive a m…
The geolinguistics of English as an academic lingua franca
To explore how the global status of English influences knowledge production and circulation, this paper focuses on citations in English‐medium national and English‐medium international journal articles. Drawing on text, ethnographic, and corpus data from a longitudinal study in four national contexts, we argue that citation practices vary significantly along geolinguistic lines – that is, in terms of who gets cited, where and by whom – and that s…
An international journal’s attempts to address inequalities in academic publishing
Scholars around the world are under increasing pressure to publish in English, in Anglophone centre journals. At the same time, research on professional academic writing indicates that scholars from outside Anglophone centre contexts face considerable obstacles in getting their academic work published in such journals, relating to material and linguistic resources. This paper draws on current research to offer a brief outline of inequalities aris…
Ethnography as Method, Methodology, and “Deep Theorizing”
This article critically explores the value of ethnography for enhancing context-sensitive approaches to the study of academic writing. Drawing on data from two longitudinal studies, student writing in the United Kingdom and professional academic writing in Hungary, Slovakia, Spain, and Portugal, the author illustrates the different contributions ethnography can make to researching academic writing, depending on the level at which it is construed,…
The sociolinguistics of writing in a global context
In this paper, we argue that writing has largely been ignored as a significant empirical object of study in sociolinguistics. Pointing to the consequences of the specific ways in which writing has been positioned historically within sociolinguistics, we discuss the need to re-imagine writing as an object of study and problematize the dominant lenses through which writing is understood and analyzed. We draw on recent work to illustrate three key c…
Multilingual Scholars and the Imperative to Publish in English
This article examines how multilingual scholars who work outside English-speaking countries negotiate the demand to publish in English alongside their broader academic and publishing interests. Based on our ethnographic study of the academic writing and publishing practices of 16 psychology scholars in Hungary, Slovakia and Spain, we characterize the range of communities for whom the scholars are writing, drawing on notions of discourse community…
The geolinguistics of English as an academic lingua franca
To explore how the global status of English influences knowledge production and circulation, this paper focuses on citations in English‐medium national and English‐medium international journal articles. Drawing on text, ethnographic, and corpus data from a longitudinal study in four national contexts, we argue that citation practices vary significantly along geolinguistic lines – that is, in terms of who gets cited, where and by whom – and that s…
An international journal’s attempts to address inequalities in academic publishing
Scholars around the world are under increasing pressure to publish in English, in Anglophone centre journals. At the same time, research on professional academic writing indicates that scholars from outside Anglophone centre contexts face considerable obstacles in getting their academic work published in such journals, relating to material and linguistic resources. This paper draws on current research to offer a brief outline of inequalities aris…
Introduction to the thematic issue
Multilingualism in academic writing for publication
We are living in an era characterized by multilingualism, global mobility, superdiversity (Blommaert, 2010), and digital communications. Mobility and multilingualism, however, have long characterized most geolinguistic contexts, including those where monolingual ideologies have influenced the formation of contemporary nation states (Cenoz, 2013). As language is a pillar of both curriculum and instruction, in many academic spaces around the world …
Who is the ‘I’? An exploration of social work professional written discourse and implications for social work education
This paper brings together two areas of importance to social work education, professional identity and professional writing; identity is often viewed as central to social work practice and education, whilst writing as marginal.However, given that social work is a 'writing intensive' profession, writing is a key site of the enactment of professional identity and practice, meriting significant attention.Using the notion of 'voice' this paper explor…
Legitimizing dialogue as textual and ideological goal in academic writing for assessment and publication
The semiotic world that we inhabit (within and outside the academy) is fast changing in terms of the resources that are used and the practices in which many engage. Yet the institutional norms governing highly consequential academic texts – students’ texts assessed as part of their disciplinary-based activity and scholars’ papers submitted for publication – lack engagement with this array of resources and, epistemologically, continue to drive a m…
Student Writing as 'Academic Literacies'
A body of research has recently emerged in the UK which adopts an 'academic literacies' stance towards student writing. An 'academic literacies' stance conceptualises student writing as a socially situated discourse practice which is ideologically inscribed (Jones et al., 1999; Lea & Street, 1998). Whilst powerful as an oppositional frame, that is as a critique of current conceptualisations and practices surrounding student writing, academic lite…
Multilingual Scholars and the Imperative to Publish in English
This article examines how multilingual scholars who work outside English-speaking countries negotiate the demand to publish in English alongside their broader academic and publishing interests. Based on our ethnographic study of the academic writing and publishing practices of 16 psychology scholars in Hungary, Slovakia and Spain, we characterize the range of communities for whom the scholars are writing, drawing on notions of discourse community…
Professional Academic Writing by Multilingual Scholars
Scholars around the world are under increasing pressure to publish their research in the medium of English. However, little empirical research has explored how the global premium of English influences the academic text production of scholars working outside of English-speaking countries. This article draws on a longitudinal text-oriented ethnographic study of psychology scholars in Hungary, Slovakia, Spain, and Portugal to follow the trajectories…
Academic Literacy and the Languages of Change , Edited by Lucia Thesen and Ermien van Pletzen
Discourse. A Critical Introduction ‐ By Jan Blommaert
Ethnography as Method, Methodology, and “Deep Theorizing”
This article critically explores the value of ethnography for enhancing context-sensitive approaches to the study of academic writing. Drawing on data from two longitudinal studies, student writing in the United Kingdom and professional academic writing in Hungary, Slovakia, Spain, and Portugal, the author illustrates the different contributions ethnography can make to researching academic writing, depending on the level at which it is construed,…
Designing Research-Based Heuristics to Support English-Medium Academic Writing and Publishing
The geolinguistics of English as an academic lingua franca
To explore how the global status of English influences knowledge production and circulation, this paper focuses on citations in English‐medium national and English‐medium international journal articles. Drawing on text, ethnographic, and corpus data from a longitudinal study in four national contexts, we argue that citation practices vary significantly along geolinguistic lines – that is, in terms of who gets cited, where and by whom – and that s…
An international journal’s attempts to address inequalities in academic publishing
Scholars around the world are under increasing pressure to publish in English, in Anglophone centre journals. At the same time, research on professional academic writing indicates that scholars from outside Anglophone centre contexts face considerable obstacles in getting their academic work published in such journals, relating to material and linguistic resources. This paper draws on current research to offer a brief outline of inequalities aris…
Legitimizing dialogue as textual and ideological goal in academic writing for assessment and publication
The semiotic world that we inhabit (within and outside the academy) is fast changing in terms of the resources that are used and the practices in which many engage. Yet the institutional norms governing highly consequential academic texts – students’ texts assessed as part of their disciplinary-based activity and scholars’ papers submitted for publication – lack engagement with this array of resources and, epistemologically, continue to drive a m…
Resonances, Resistances and Relations
Introduction to the thematic issue
Academic Publishing and Presenting in a Global Context
The sociolinguistics of writing in a global context
In this paper, we argue that writing has largely been ignored as a significant empirical object of study in sociolinguistics. Pointing to the consequences of the specific ways in which writing has been positioned historically within sociolinguistics, we discuss the need to re-imagine writing as an object of study and problematize the dominant lenses through which writing is understood and analyzed. We draw on recent work to illustrate three key c…
The politics of English, language and uptake
Drawing on 95 text histories from a longitudinal project on writing for publication in 4 national contexts, this article analyses the language ideologies enacted in referees’ and editors’ comments on articles submitted for publication in English-medium ‘international’ journals. It considers how orientations to ‘English’, ‘language’ and ‘language work’ are enacted in practices of reviewer uptake and the consequences of such practices for knowledge…
Baal/CUP Seminars 2013 / Text Trajectories – Developing dynamic approaches to textual analysis
This seminar took place on 19 April, 2013 at the Centre for Language and Communication, Faculty of Language and Education Studies, The Open University. The seminar was coordinated by Janet Maybin and Theresa Lillis and there were 28 participants, including four postgraduate students, from universities in Britain, Belgium and South Africa
Global Academic Publishing
Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories
Drawing on a text-oriented action research ethnography of the writing practices of UK-based social workers, this paper focuses on a key but problematic aspect of everyday, professional textual practice – the production of “case notes.” Using data drawn from interviews, workshops, texts and observation, the paper locates case notes within social work everyday practice and explores the entextualization of three distinct case notes. The heuristic of
Introduction
Resistir regímenes de evaluación en el estudio del escribir
Este artículo se enfoca en el imaginario (Castoriadis, 1987) predominante en la investigación sobre el escribir y se pregunta, en particular, cómo los regímenes de evaluación ejercen orientaciones analíticas sobre este fenómeno. El artículo retoma algunos extractos de tres proyectos de investigación: uno sobre el escribir académico de los estudiantes (Lillis, 2001); otro sobre el escribir de los académicos para la publicación (Lillis y Curry, 201…
Time, the Written Record, and Professional Practice
Drawing on a three-year ethnographically oriented study exploring contemporary professional social work writing, this article focuses on a key concern: the amount of time taken up with writing, or “paperwork.” We explore the relationship between time and professional social work writing in three key ways: (a) as a discrete, measurable phenomenon—how much time is spent on writing? (b) as a textual dimension to social work writing—how do institutio…
English and/or Russian medium publications? A case study exploring academic research writing in contemporary Russian academia
El enfoque de literacidades académicas
En este artículo, desde su implicación temprana en el campo de investigación y práctica conocido como literacidades académicas, la investigadora británica Theresa Lillis reconstruye el contexto en el que surge dicho campo, define sus principales intereses de indagación y enseñanza, y resume sus contribuciones, durante veinte años, a la comprensión de la escritura académica en el Reino Unido y otros países. Lillis encuadra históricamente, en un co…
Professional written voice “in flux”
Contemporary professional social work can be characterised by increased textualisation (after Iedema and Scheeres 2003) with written texts mediating most action. At the same time, writing, as a key dimension to social workers’ practice and labour, is often institutionally unacknowledged, becoming visible primarily when identified as a “problem.” This paper draws on a three year nationally funded UK-based research project to offer a situated accou…
Manifesto
Buscamos discutir alguns pressupostos sobre o uso do inglês como "língua franca" em contextos acadêmico-científicos, identificar o impacto destes pressupostos nas trajetórias de produção e recepção de conhecimentos, e legitimar o uso de múltiplas línguas para a troca acadêmica transnacional. Propomos dez princípios: o uso do inglês quanto "língua franca" acadêmico-científica não sempre promove a inclusão; uma suposta "língua franca" acadêmicocien…
Sociology (25 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (16 works) · Linguistics (16 works) · Political science (16 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Pedagogy (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Academic writing (7 works)