BIOGRAPHY

Gavin Lamb has been in his current position as associate professor of English language at NHH since 2024. He holds a Master of Arts degree and Ph.D. from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and received his doctorate in 2019. His research interests combine discourse analysis, ecolinguistics, nexus analysis, and organizational ethnography. These approaches provide an important lens on how language and communication shape human attitudes and behavior towards sustainability issues in professional settings including tourism, conservation and climate adaptation efforts in business and society. This research brings linguistic findings on intercultural and professional communication in organizational settings into dialogue with interdisciplinary research in sustainability studies. Through this work he seeks to provide empirical insight into the diverse communicative practices shaping professional responses to growing sustainability challenges, from climate adaptation to biodiversity conservation.

Gavin Lamb’s current research projects draw on ethnographic linguistic methods to examine the role of language and communication in mediating the co-production of sustainability knowledge across the private and public sector. A key area of his research examines the communication practices that inform the collaborations between government, private and public/civil actors around endangered species. This project provides new insights into forms of communication enabling the creation of shared value across business and society that serve to restore biodiversity and promote the sustainable use of ecosystems.

In collaboration with researchers at the University of Oslo, Gavin Lamb engages in research that develops ‘citizen linguistics’ as a methodology for investigating sustainability communication. By integrating citizen science and linguistic research methods, the project engages the participation of citizens/non-professional researchers in the research process to produce more holistic knowledge about communicating sustainability challenges at the intersection of society and science.

Through his research affiliation with NORCE, Gavin Lamb is also a senior researcher on the Horizon Europe research project Impetus4Change (I4C) that supports the work of experts from across the public and private sectors to support climate change knowledge networks in Europe. His work on this project examines how these knowledge networks create, use and share climate information to inform adaptation strategies in cities and regions across Europe. 

Gavin Lamb teaches topics on sustainability communication, intercultural communication, academic writing (MET513), and English for Business (ENG10, ENG11). He has taught courses on multilingualism, discourse analysis, nexus analysis, the sociolinguistics of globalization, ecolinguistics and environmental/climate communication. Gavin Lamb also teaches the PhD course MET513, a seminar on academic writing in a research context. This course equips students with linguistic tools and writing practices to confidently and effectively participate in written scholarly discourse in the social sciences/economics. 

Gavin has published in a wide range of academic venues including Applied Linguistics, Applied Linguistics Review, Multilingua, Language in Society, Journal of Language and Politics, Cambridge University Press, Bloomsbury, and Routledge.

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TEACHING AREAS 

English business communication, intercultural communication, sustainability communication.