Ruth Wodak is Distinguished Professor and Chair in Discourse Studies

Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis , or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed language use or any significant semiotic event....

 at Lancaster University

Lancaster University

Lancaster University, officially The University of Lancaster, is a leading research-intensive British university in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established by Royal Charter in 1964 and initially based in St Leonard's Gate until moving to a purpose-built 300 acre campus at...

. She moved from Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, where she was full professor of Applied Linguistics

Applied linguistics

Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies, investigates, and offers solutions to language-related real-life problems...

 since 1991. She has stayed co-director of the Austrian National Focal Point (NFP) of the European Monitoring Centre for Racism

Racism

Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...

, Xenophobia

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...

 and Anti Semitism.

Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein-Preis

Wittgenstein-Preis

The Wittgenstein-Preis is the highest Austrian science award.It is awarded once per year by the Austrian Science Fund on behalf of the Austrian Ministry for Science.The prize money of 1.5 million euro is tied to research activities in the following six years....

 in 1996. Her main projects focussed on "Discourses on Un/employment in EU organizations; Debates on NATO and Neutrality in Austria and Hungary; The Discursive Construction of European Identities; Attitudes towards EU-Enlargement; Racism at the Top. Parliamentary Debates on Immigration in Six EU countries; The Discursive Construction of the Past - Individual and Collective Memories of the German Wehrmacht and the Second World War." In October 2006, she was awarded the Woman's Prize of the City of Vienna.

Her research is mainly located in Discourse Studies (DS) and in Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis

Critical discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways social and political domination are visible in text and talk....

 (CDA). Together with her former colleagues and Ph.D students in Vienna (Rudolf de Cillia, Gertraud Benke, Helmut Gruber, Florian Menz, Martin Reisigl, Usama Suleiman, Christine Anthonissen), she elaborated the Discourse Historical Approach in CDA" (DHA) which is interdisciplinary, problem-oriented, and analyzes the change of discursive practices over time and in various genres.

She is member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals, co-editor of the journal Discourse and Society and editor of Critical Discourse Studies (with Norman Fairclough

Norman Fairclough

Norman Fairclough is emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University. He is one of the founders of critical discourse analysis as applied to sociolinguistics. CDA is concerned with how power is exercised through language...

, Phil Graham and Jay Lemke) and of the Journal of Language and Politics (with Paul Chilton). Together with Greg Myers, she edits the book series DAPSAC (Benjamins). She was also section editor of "Language and Politics" for the Second Edition of the Elsevier Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics

Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics

The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, first published in 1994, with a 2nd edition in 2006, is an encyclopedia of all matters related to language and linguistics...

. Ruth chaired the Humanities

Humanities

The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

 and Social Sciences

Social sciences

Social science is the field of study concerned with society. "Social science" is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences...

 Panel for the EURYI award, in the European Science Foundation

European Science Foundation

The European Science Foundation is an association of 78 member organisations devoted to scientific research in 30 European countries. It is an independent, non-governmental, non-profit organisation that facilitates cooperation and collaboration in European research and development, European...

, 2006 - 2008.

She has held visiting professorships in Uppsala

Uppsala

- Economy :Today Uppsala is well established in medical research and recognized for its leading position in biotechnology.*Abbott Medical Optics *GE Healthcare*Pfizer *Phadia, an offshoot of Pharmacia*Fresenius*Q-Med...

, Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

, University of Minnesota

University of Minnesota

The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

 and Georgetown University

Georgetown University

Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...

, Washington, D.C. In the spring 2004, she had a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the University of East Anglia

University of East Anglia

The University of East Anglia is a public research university based in Norwich, United Kingdom. It was established in 1963, and is a founder-member of the 1994 Group of research-intensive universities.-History:...

, Norwich, UK. Recently, she was awarded the Kerstin Hesselgren

Kerstin Hesselgren

Kerstin Hesselgren was a Swedish politician.Kerstin Hesselgren became the first woman to be elected in to the Swedish parliament after the female suffrage in 1921. She was elected by suggestion of the Liberals with support from the Social democrats.- Biography :Hesselgren was born at Torsåker,...

 Chair of the Swedish Parliament

Parliament of Sweden

The Riksdag is the national legislative assembly of Sweden. The riksdag is a unicameral assembly with 349 members , who are elected on a proportional basis to serve fixed terms of four years...

 and stayed at University of Örebro

Örebro University

Örebro University is a state university in Örebro, Sweden.University-level education in Örebro started in 1960s, when Uppsala University started to give some courses in Örebro. On the basis of these activities, an independent högskola was created in 1977 under the name Högskolan i Örebro...

, Sweden, from March to June 2008.

She has co-authored works with Teun A. van Dijk

Teun A. van Dijk

Teun Adrianus van Dijk , is a scholar in the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis ....

.