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Congratulations to Professor Kira Hall for receiving the University's highest award of distinguished professor!

Kira Hall is an expert in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, and retains a well-deserved reputation as a sophisticated theorist and rigorous analyst of fundamental questions regarding the relationship of language to gender and sexuality, social class, identity, modernity and globalization, and contemporary Indian society.

In her career, Hall has helmed nine edited volumes and coedited four special journal issues. Currently authoring two books and serving as co-editor of the journal��Gender and Language, her work is regularly included in anthologies of the most important work in the field and discussed in introductory textbooks to sociolinguistics, language and gender studies, and linguistic anthropology.

Hall’s work is of a rare quality in that it has shaped the direction of her field in a number of ways. Her articles theorizing the relationship between language and identity rank among the most highly cited publications in the history of sociolinguistics. She is widely recognized for bringing sexuality into the study of language and gender: She founded the field of queer linguistics and is coeditor of the first��Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality. Past president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, her work takes many forms—including ethnographic work with hijras, a nonbinary “third gender” category in India—and is foundational to the study of the fields she has advanced.

As associate chair of undergraduate studies, Hall revitalized the undergraduate degree program, resulting in a substantial increase in undergraduate majors. She established the interdisciplinary graduate program in Culture, Language and Social Practice and developed it into a research center with an international reputation.

She has received numerous recognitions for her improvements to the Literacy Practicum, a community-based learning program. A popular professor, her work with undergraduate and graduate students—who leave glowing reviews—attests to the professorial impact she has had in addition to her prowess in scholarly research.