Sheena joined Coventry University as Head of English and Languages in 2011 from the University of Birmingham, where she was Reader in Educational Linguistics and member of the MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism. Prior to that she was in CELTE, now the Centre for Applied Linguistics, at Warwick University.

Sheena has a background in Functional Linguistics, English Language Teaching (Germany, Sudan, Ukraine), EFL, ESL and EAL Teacher Education and Applied Linguistics (Canada and UK), with experience in Malaysia, Botswana, Pakistan, and China. She enjoys teaching grammar, academic English and genre analysis, and has been involved in the development of national and international pre-university, undergraduate, postgraduate and workplace programmes.

Her more than 70 publications include teaching materials, and internationally refereed journal articles in journals such as Applied Linguistics, TESOL Quarterly, Language and Education, Language Awareness, Language Teaching Research, English Language Teaching Journal, TESL Canada Journal, Journal of English for Academic Purposes and the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.

As an applied linguist, I particularly value the synergies between teaching and research. By researching the English we use in education, we uncover the complexities of how language functions in changing and diverse social and educational contexts, and how we communicate on many different levels. This complexity is enriched when English is used in international settings by speakers of other languages.