Full professor

Biografical information
Research
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Biografische info

Piet Desmet (° 1965) is full professor of French linguistics and language teaching methodology at the Linguistics Department of the K.U.Leuven. He teaches French linguistics at the Kortrijk Campus of the K.U.Leuven (K.U.Leuven Kulak) and French language teaching methodology and applied linguistics at the K.U.Leuven.

He studied Linguistics and Literature, Romance languages (French – Spanish) at the K.U.Leuven, where he got his master’s degree in 1987. He also received his baccalaureate in philosophy from the same university. A function as a junior academic staff member at the French linguistics department allowed him to obtain his PhD with a dissertation on La linguistique naturaliste en France (1867-1922): le débat sur la nature, l’origine et l’évolution du langage (supervisors: L. Melis and P. Swiggers). After that he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Fund for Scientific Research - Flanders.

He has had an academic tenure at the K.U.Leuven Department of Linguistics since 1998, successively as a lecturer (1998-2000), senior lecturer (2000-2003), professor (2003-2006) and as a full professor since 2006. For many years he has also been “professeur invite” at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense.

His research mainly focuses on (the history of) French and general linguistics and on French teaching methodology, with a particular interest in Computer-Assisted Language Learning. He serves as a member of the Leuven research unit French, Italian and Comparative Linguistics. He als coordinates the Kortrijk research team ITEC (Interdisciplinary Research on Technology, Education & Communication) which focusses on educational technology across disciplines. He is the National Representative of EUROCALL for Belgium.

For the moment he is president of the Arts Faculty and member of the managerial committee of K.U.Leuven Kulak. He is vice-president of Alliance française West Flanders and a board member of the Business Language and Communication Centre (BLCC) and of the regional broadcasting company Focus-WTV.

Research

• Computer-Assisted Language Learning
  - adaptive and mobile learning systems
  - serious gaming
  - learning platforms and integrated language learning environments
  - corpus CALL & writing aids
  
• The history of (French and general) linguistics
  - language development
  - prestructuralist linguistics (19th and early 20th Century)
  - the origin of general linguistics
• French descriptive grammar and French-Dutch constrastive grammar
  - syntax
  - pedagogical grammaticography

Projects

Running projects

See this page

Recently finished

Recent publications

List of publications.

Teaching

at Kortrijk / at Leuven

You can find the complete list of subjects (with their descriptions) here.

Useful links