Mela Sarkar

Biography:
Mela Sarkar was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, to a Ukrainian-Canadian mother and a Bangladeshi Brahmin father who had met as grad students at the University of Manitoba. They settled in Toronto, Canada, where she grew up. Issues of heritage versus dominant languages, plurilingualism/ pluriculturalism, and hybrid identities were therefore woven into the fabric of everyday normal for her. Since taking up her current position at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, Montreal, Quebec, in 2001, she has branched out from mainstream second language acquisition research into critical sociolinguistic inquiry, with a focus on empowering minority-language speakers through diversification of their communicative repertoires.
Link(s):
Position:
Associate Professor at McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE)