Professor Wim Vandenbussche (VUB) will be participating at panel 4.3 on Social Agency and Ideology as a Bias Factor in Historical Sociolinguistics in Room C205 in the context of the HiSoN 2017 Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center.

 Wim Vandenbussche was born in Bruges in 1973. He completed his studies in 'Germanic linguistics and literature (Dutch-English)' at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1994 with a master's thesis on the language use of the Flemish right wing party Vlaams Blok (DOWNLOAD). His 1999 PhD - A Study of the Written Language Use of the Lower Classes in Bruges during the 19th Century -was the first major study in historical sociolinguistics in the Dutch language area and was awarded the Linguistics Prize of the Royal Academy for Dutch Linguistics and Literature and the six-yearly Ingnace Vanderschueren Prize of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

His research is situated in the domain of historical sociolinguistics, with particular attention to the language situation in Flanders during the 18th and 19th century.

Until October 2008, he was a postdoctoral research fellow of the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research and held a professorship in historical sociolinguistics. He was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London (2007) and a visiting professor at the Universiteit Gent (2007) and at the Université de Liège (2012). In 2009 the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Arts and Science appointed him as Laureate in the Humanities as a recognition for his research career so far.

As a professor of Dutch linguistics, he is affiliated with the department of linguistics and literary studies (LIST) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He currently is head of department and head of education. He teaches courses on Dutch and Germanic language history, as well as on various aspects of sociolinguistics.

Until 2013 he served on the university board ('raad van bestuur') and the university council ('bestuurscollege') at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel; until 2012 he was the director of the VUB Centre for Linguistics.

He is a member of the editorial board of the Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis / Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire and Taal en Tongval. He is honorary editor of the Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics (Mouton de Gruyter, 2015-...) and co-editor of the book series Historical Sociolinguistics - Studies on Language and Society in the Past (Peter Lang Oxford) and Onbekend Taalverleden (VUB Press). Among other affiliations, he is a board member of the 'Stichting Bibliographie Linguistique' and the Hogeschooltaal, as well as a founding member of HISON, the Historical Sociolinguistics Network. In 2011 the Agder Academy of Sciences and Letters elected him as a member for life; the Royal Academy for Dutch Linguistics and Literature followed suit in 2015. A taste for strong coffee is his weakness.