Dr Ranjan Sen

My primary research focus on phonological reconstruction has a threefold aim:

1. Evaluating theories of sound change, mainly the Life Cycle Model (e.g. Bermúdez-Otero 2015), by establishing and testing their predictions, thus allowing a better evaluation of the much-debated roles of phonetics, structural constraints, and analogical pressures in driving change (e.g. 2016 inaugural article in Papers in Historical Phonology),
2. Understanding past language attitudes, which form the bases of contemporary ones (e.g. 2025 article on Keats in Selected Papers from 25th ICHL, Oxford), and
3. Reconstructing past voices for practical purposes, bringing linguistics to life in an accessible way for a wider and more diverse audience (e.g. CGI Keats reading his own poetry in original pronunciation on the bicentenary of his death).

I co-created the freely accessible The Eighteenth-Century English Phonology database (ECEP) (Beal, Yáñez-Bouza, Sen & Wallis 2015, updated 2023), which allows easy access to rich information from difficult eighteenth-century UK pronouncing dictionaries. I subsequently co-edited the 2020 special issue of English Language and Linguistics, on ‘Studies in Late Modern English historical phonology using the Eighteenth-Century English Phonology database (ECEP)’.

I was the plenary speaker at the major international conference in my field in 2015, the Edinburgh Symposium in Historical Phonology, and have been an invited speaker at the Philological Society and Abralin ao Vivo: Linguists Online, among others. Based on my expertise, I am contracted to write the minigraph ‘Phonological Change’ in Cambridge Elements in Phonology (Cambridge University Press). My visiting professorship at the University of Toronto (2014) led to an invitation to write the chapter ‘The Greco-Roman tradition’ in the 2022 The Oxford History of Phonology (Oxford University Press). I am on the advisory board for Papers in Historical Phonology, and the editorial board for the Edinburgh Studies in Historical Linguistics (Edinburgh University Press).

I have growing international profile in reconstructing historical speech. I have a strong, longstanding relationship with the Institute for Digital Archaeology, with a record of successful collaboration at the interface of academia and public engagement (Keats project in 2021; collaborations on Twain and Byron). I also have good relations with museums and heritage partners, such as the Mark Twain House and Museum (Hartford, Connecticut, USA), and actors, writers, and directors in the entertainment sector.

I constructed the pronunciation for a speaking CGI avatar of the Romantic poet John Keats for the bicentennial of his death in 2021, an event (over 100 attendees and over 4,000 views on YouTube) to which a stellar cast contributed, from BBC’s John Simpson to Poet Laureate Simon Armitage. I presented to a broad audience not only how we ascertain historical pronunciations, but also a sociolinguistic assessment of Keats’ derogatory labelling as a ‘Cockney’ poet, which resonates with present-day concerns around dialects in school and the workplace. The successful project garnered significant media attention, e.g. Anna Russell’s ‘Bringing Keats Back to Life’ in the New Yorker, 24 March 2021; The Telegraph (6/2/21), The Daily Mail (10/2/21), The Guardian (19/2/21), Observador (Spanish; 32/2/21), La Stampa (Italian; 23/2/21), and Euronews (25/2/21). I subsequently appeared on the Keats-Shelley podcast inviting a wide audience to consider Keats in his time through my reconstructed pronunciation (several hundred downloads; 13/6/23).

In an international context, I recorded a podcast for the Perceptions and Positions of Postcolonial English group based at New York University, Abu Dhabi, a project which aims to give agency, legitimacy, and space to diverse voices in spoken and written expression.