Dr Alina Kamalova, PhD in Russian and Sociolinguistics, the University of Edinburgh

Profile

My research focuses on discursive identity construction, language policies and ideologies, multilingualism, and media discourse. Combining approaches from critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, memory studies, and visual culture, I examine how language both shapes and is shaped by the societies we live in.

Currently, I am working on a book that explores how the war in Ukraine influences language ideologies and national identity construction in Kazakhstan.

Before joining QMUL, I taught at various international institutions, including Moscow State University, Nazarbayev University, the University of Edinburgh, and Suleyman Demirel University. I have designed and taught modules at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in areas such as Discourse, Culture, and Communication; Russian Language and Culture; Research Methods in Sociolinguistics; and Negotiating Identities. Additionally, I have co-supervised PhD students on topics including the construction of gendered stereotypes in media, bilingualism in Kazakhstan’s education, and the role of English in different social spheres across the post-Soviet region.

I am currently a member of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; the Eurasian Regions Study Group within the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies; and the Linguistic Society of America.

Teaching

LIB5054 Cultural Encounters in Theory and Practice

SML4006 Visual Cultures

SML4006 Russian group seminars

STA7009 Digital Global Audiences and Participatory Culture (Week 10)

Research

Publications

2025 Kamalova, Alina. (Under review). Reimagining Sovereignty: Contemporary Resemiotisation of Kazakh Opposition Leaders Online in the Shadow of Russian Expansionism. Central Asian Survey.

2025 Kamalova, Alina. (Under review). Speaking Back: Negotiating Postcolonial Subjectivities and (De)colonial Discourse on Kazakhstani Social Media. Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies.

2025 Kamalova, Alina. Resemiotising globalisation and elitism: English-written neon signs in Kazakhstani coffee shops and on social media. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Special Issue: The globalisation of English and the Turkic speaking countries of the Formner Soviet Union: attitudes, policy and implementation, vol 2025, no. 294, pp. 69-97.https://doi.org/10.1515/ijsl-2024-0089

2025 Kamalova, Alina. Speak Kazakh: Language Ideologies in Kazakhstan's Social Media in Times of Russian-Ukranian War. In Journal of Sociolinguistics 29 (3), 182 -193. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12699

2025 Kamalova, Alina. It’s Your Fault: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Narratives Surrounding Gender-Based Violence in a Russian Talk Show. In Language, Culture, and Society 6 (2), 190-222. https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.24028.kam

2024 Kamalova, Alina. You are a murderer: critical discourse analysis of conversations around abortions in the Russian talk show. In Discourse & Society, 35 (2), pp. 194-222.

2022 Kamalova, Alina. Motherhood and child abandonment: narrative and critical discourse analysis of tabloid talk show communication. In Emergence, Vol. XII, pp. 56-74.

Dissemination

Conferences (for the last three years):

2025 Qazaqsha Soyle: De-russification in Kazakhstan's Social Media, ICCEES

XI World Congress, 21- 25 July, UCL, UK.

2025 Reimagining Sovereignty: Contemporary Resemiotisation of Kazakh Opposition Leaders Online in the Shadow of Russian Expansionism, From the Extremes to the Centre and Back Again? Radicalisation, mainstreaming and reconciliation in local, national and global context, University of Navarra, 5-7 June, Pamplona, Spain. 

2025 Imagined Migration: Nostalgia for Kazakhstan's Sovereignty, Migration, Mobilities, and Borders in Eurasia workshop, University of Manchester's Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts and Languages and BASEES, 5 March, Manchester, UK.

Speak Kazakh: Language ideologies in Kazakhstan’s social media in times of war, Flipping the Script: Language Policies in Flux Across Eurasia Conference, UC Berkeley, Jan, 24, 2025.

Signs of Change: English, Globalism and Neoliberalism in Kazakhstan's Coffee Shops, Plenary Session "Crossing Boundaries: Connections, Mobilities, and Infrastructures in Central Asia and the Caucasus Throughout the Centuries", ASIAC XVIII Annual Conference, Ca'Foscari University, Venice, Dec 9-11, 2024.

Language ideologies in Kazakhstan in times of geopolitical crisis - Roundtable "Multilingualism in the Urban Space: Language Policy and Diversity", 1st Eurasian Congress of Linguists, Dec, 11, 2024.

Mockery in Kazakhstan's Social Media as a tool of constructing language hierarchies, 4th Central Asia Language and Education Conference, KIMEP University, Almaty, 16-17 May, 2024.

How dare you – you’re a mother: familial identity constrcution in media discourse, 3rd International Conference on Sociolinguistics, Prague, Czech Republic, 24-26 August, 2022.

Negotiation of norms and identites in family conversations: corpus- assisted critical discourse analysis of the Russian talk show, Sociolinguistic Symposium 24, Ghent, Belgium, 13-16 July, 2022.