Dr. Virginia Hill

Dr. Virginia Hill will receive the ranking of Professor Emerita. This honorary rank is awarded upon or after retirement from active academic duties, to such professors as have served the university with great distinction.

Professor Emerita in Humanities and Languages

Dr. Virginia Hill has been a valuable member of the UNB Saint John faculty since 1991; having received an MA (1977) from the University of Bucharest, and a BA (1987), MA (1988) and PhD (1991) from the University of Geneva.

Establishing herself as UNB’s only linguistic professor, she has become an international leader in her field with her research output not only prolific, but of the highest quality. She is an exceptional and distinguished scholar of theoretical linguistics, in particular, the syntactic computations specific to the human brain. Her ground-breaking theories have been praised and adopted by specialists in Linguistics worldwide.

She has held SSHRC funding nearly continuously for almost 30 years, as principal investigator and co-investigator or collaborator for national projects, demonstrating the solid theoretical foundations of her work and breadth of her research interests. She trained and mentored more than 20 students as research assistants, was editor of three respected Linguistics journals, has 110 peer-reviewed publications, 51 peer-reviewed journal articles, 33 peer-reviewed book chapters, and 14 papers in conference proceedings. Some of her publications appear in both the prestigious Oxford University Press and top international Linguistics journals.

While at UNB, Dr. Hill received a Merit Award and was recognized as a University Research Scholar. She has held fellowships and honorary positions at a number of institutions, including: University of Bucharest, University of Göttingen and University of Kent. She has been involved as a speaker in a vast number of invited talks, as well as a participant and plenary speaker in numerous conferences.

Dr. Hill’s distinguished professional career spans 35 years during which she has acquired the reputation of a brilliant intellectual both nationally and internationally. Her mentorship of graduate students and peers has left a legacy at UNB and beyond.