Peter Trudgill,
FBA (; born 7 November 1943) is a
sociolinguist, academic and author. He was born in
Norwich, England, where he attended the
City of Norwich School from 1955. Trudgill studied
modern languages at
King's College, Cambridge and obtained a PhD from the
University of Edinburgh in 1971. Before becoming professor of
sociolinguistics at the
University of Essex he taught in the Department of linguistic science at the
University of Reading from 1970 to 1986. He was professor of English language and
linguistics at the
University of Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1993 to 1998, and then at the
University of Fribourg, also in Switzerland, from which he retired in September 2005. He is now (3rd September 2008) part-time professor of sociolinguistics at the
University of Agder in
Kristiansand, Norway, and adjunct professor at the Research centre for linguistic typology at
La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia, as well as honorary professor at the
University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England.