Joan Pujolar (Olot, 1964) has degrees in Catalan Philology and in Anglogermanic Philology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; an MA in Language Studies and a PhD from the University of Lancaster (UK).

He is associate professor of the Department of Arts and Humanities at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, where he is responsible for courses on Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. He is the director of the research group on “Language, culture and identity in the global era”. His research focuses on how language use is mobilized in the construction of identities and its implications for access to symbolic and economic resources. He has conducted research on the use of Catalan amongst young people, immigrants and in the economic sector, as well as on multilingualism and gender. He now coordinates the research are of the Linguamon-UOC Chair in Multilingualism, from where he runs a research project on “new speakers” and the experience of people who ordinarily speak a language that is not their native one.