Director and Senior Research Associate
sonja.novak@guest.arnes.si
+386 1 200 18 74 
Degree: She graduated in 1980 from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana (FF UL), Department of Germanic Languages and Literature and Department of Romance Languages and Literature – professor of English language and literature and professor of Italian language and literature.
Master's degree: She completed her master's studies in 1993 at the Department of Romance Languages and Literature, FF UL, with the defense of her master's thesis "Cultural Creativity of Members of the Italian Nationality," mentor: Prof. Dr. Atilj Rakar.
Doctorate: 2003 at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, "Language adaptation in ethnically mixed areas of Slovenia," supervisor: Prof. Dr. Albina Nećak-Lük.
Since 1980, she has been employed as a researcher at the Institute for the Study of Sociocultural Diversity (INV), and in 2010 she became its director. She also works as a university lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana.
Research work
Her field of research is the ethnically mixed area of Slovenia and the border areas of Slovenia. Her research topics cover the field of applied linguistics with a special emphasis on sociolinguistic topics dealing with social and linguistic processes in language contact areas. Within the framework of basic and applied projects, she deals in particular with the areas of language policy and language ideology, the status and position of languages in multicultural, linguistically mixed environments, the relationship between minority and majority languages, language adaptation strategies, the connection between language and individual identity, the importance of speakers' attitudes towards language(s) and bilingual education, and the economic aspect of language. As part of the fundamental research project Language and Economy (2008–2011), which she led, she conducted pioneering research in Slovenia on the connection between language and economy, which represented an important theoretical and empirical contribution to defining the value of language and the structure of the language market in Slovenia. The research identified the connection between linguistic and economic variables in various ethnically mixed and ethnically homogeneous environments and found that official language policy and the economic situation of the area influence language education and the structure of the language market. The empirical data obtained contributed to the development of theoretical concepts about the value of language and indicated the role of social and economic variables that influence the structure of the language market. The inclusion of economic variables in the explanation of various language processes represents a contribution that builds on sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic findings and, from a theoretical perspective, also represents an achievement in the field of applied linguistics.
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