Hilton, Dr N.H. (Nanna)

Areas of expertise

Sociolinguistics, language attitudes, phonetics, citizen science, language planning and policies

Biography

Nanna Haug Hilton (Ringerike, Norway) studied English Language and Culture (MA 2005), and holds a PhD (2010) in Linguistics from the University of York. Her past research topics include standard language ideology, language change and regional identity in Norway; mutual intelligibility between closely related languages (alongside Charlotte Gooskens and Anja Schüppert in the Micrela project at the University of Groningen) and language attitudes and language policies in Fryslân. Between 2016 and 2020 she ran the citizen science project ‘Stimmen fan Fryslân’ which engaged the public in linguistic research within the region.

Hilton has previously worked as an associate professor in the Department of Frisian Language and Culture, later Minorities and Multilingualism, at the University of Groningen. Between 2011 and 2020 she taught courses there in the fields of sociolinguistics, sociology of language, Frisian as a minority language, and multilingualism.

At the Fryske Akademy she researches sociolinguistic patterns in the Frisian speech community, and she is the programme coordinator for Linguistics, since December 2025.