Kersti Börjars is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Manchester and Professor (II) of Nordic Languages at Oslo University. Her current research focuses on syntactic description and analysis and on linguistic change. She has taught courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels on English grammar, syntactic theory and diachronic linguistics. She has held grants to study linguistic change in Pennsylvania German (ESRC) and for a study of the English possessive (AHRC). She is editor of the Journal of Linguistics and co-author (with Kate Burridge) of Introducing English Grammar (2010).