The 7th International Conference on Cultural Studies and Applied Linguistics (the 7th ICCSAL 2026)

Assoc. Prof. Sophia Diamantopolou

Sophia Diamantopoulou is Associate Professor at the UCL Institute of Education, and Departmental Tutor (Pastoral) for the Culture, Communication and Media department. She leads the MA module in "Multimodal Communication" (MA in Applied Linguistics) and the BA module "Communication for the Common Good" ( BA Communication). She is also contributing to other BA and MA modules at UCL, such as the BA in Arts and Sciences and the MA in English Education. She has previously led modules and taught for the MA in Education, MA in Digital Media [Critical Studies], and the MA in Museums and Galleries in Education.

She supervises MA and PhD students from the IOE programmes of Applied Linguistics and Museums and Galleries in Education. Her research interests are in interdisciplinary research in the broad areas of museum education, visual communication, multimodal social semiotics, discourse analysis and embodied learning. Sophia’s current research focuses on multimodal communication in museums and English Language learning across education settings.

Sophia has a wide range of teaching experience of over thirty years across schools, museums and higher education in the UK and abroad. She has previously worked as a researcher on eleven externally funded education projects at the Institute of Education (IOE) and has taught on various research methods courses at the former IOE Doctoral School. In 2018 she was recognized by the Higher Education Academy as a Senior Fellow (SFHEA).

Sophia has a longstanding involvement in the field of Multimodal Communication, Social Semiotics and Discourse Analysis. She has been one of the initial members of the steering group of the Centre for Multimodal Research (CMR), since its inception in 2003. She has co-organised the first two international conferences on multimodality at IOE in 2008 and 2012 and was chair and organiser of the ICOM-11 conference in 2023 . She leads the Visual and Multimodal Research Forum seminars at the UCL CMR and runs reading groups on multimodality. Since 2019 she is the co-creator of Multimodality Talks, an international lecture series. Since 2023 she runs the UCL Network for Multimodal Research, a blog showcasing multimodal research and current talks as well as forming a network for scholars in the field. She is also a member of the steering group for the UCL Research in Media, Arts and Play (ReMAP).

She has published a number of articles and book chapters on museum learning, multimodal communication, museum visitors’ movement children’s drawings and English language learning, in journals such as Museums and Society, Designs for Learning, The International Journal of Arts Education and Hermes: Journal of Language and Communication Studies. She is a member of the editorial board for 'Multimodality and Society', 'Museums and Society' and the 'American Journal of Educational Research' and book review editor for 'Visual Communication'.