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.