DR STEPHEN MAY

MY STORY

Dr Stephen May is Full Professor in Te Puna Wānanga (School of Māori and Indigenous Education) at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. An internationally renowned and avowedly interdisciplinary social scientist, his published work traverses applied- and sociolinguistics, sociology, political theory, education, and law. He is regarded as a world authority on language rights (LR) and has pioneered groundbreaking work internationally in the related fields of Indigenous language revitalization, bilingual education, critical multiculturalism, and the multilingual turn in language learning. He has published 26 books and over 120 articles and chapters on these topics. 

Stephen is renowned for bridging previously hermetic disciplinary academic discussions. His groundbreaking and award-winning interdisciplinary book, Language and Minority Rights (2001; 2012, 2nd ed.) has redefined the fields of language rights (LR), language policy, and language education. He was the first scholar internationally to argue theoretically for a non-essentialist understanding of language and identity while still outlining a group-based defence of LR for Indigenous and other linguistically minoritized groups. These innovative and trend-setting arguments in LR are supported by his extensive empirical work on language revitalisation in Indigenous (and other minoritized) contexts, and related bilingual education initiatives, including te reo Māori and Pacific languages in Aotearoa, Navajo, Sami, Welsh, Catalan, and Basque. 

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Stephen’s interdisciplinary reach and influence are also evident in his pioneering work in critical multiculturalism, integrating and advancing various critical theoretical threads such as antiracist education, critical race theory, and critical pedagogy to offer a fuller analysis of oppression and institutionalization of unequal power relations in education. Over the last decade, he has named and led developments internationally in a fundamental shift in the Applied Linguistics field from a monolingual to a multilingual perspective on language learning, exemplified in his influential The multilingual turn (2014). Most recently, his work focuses on the increase in linguistic racism, particularly as it is directed at Indigenous and other ethnolinguistic minorities.  

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Stephen has also provided wide-ranging international expert consultancy advice on language rights, and language (education) policy for Indigenous and/or minoritized students for the United Nations (Office of Strategic Planning, Paris), the UN Rapporteur on Minority Rights (Asia and Pacific regions), UNESCO, European Commission, New Zealand Human Rights’ Commission, Māori Language Commission, and Ministry of Pacific Peoples. He has acted as a legal expert witness on LR for the Ontario Supreme Court and for the Waitangi Tribunal. He has also provided professional development in bilingual education in contexts as diverse as Myanmar, Samoa, Vanuatu, Micronesia, Korea, Hong Kong, Norway, Basque Country, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, and Wales.

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Stephen is founding co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Ethnicities (2001– ), and Editor in Chief of the 10-volume benchmark Encyclopedia of Language Education (3rd ed., 2017), which has since achieved over 1-million chapter downloads. His work demonstrates strong links between theory, policy and practice – particularly, with respect to their educational implications – as reflected in his $2 million in externally funded research as PI. He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (2015), an RSNZ Fellow (2016), and was awarded the 2023 RSNZ Mason Durie Medal for social sciences.  His current H Index is 55, I Index 124, with over 15,600 citations.