Dr Maria Laura Pierucci
Nominated Fellow, June - August 2026
Dr. Maria Laura Pierucci is a contract lecturer at the University of Macerata and former research fellow on projects funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research focused on the investigation of linguistic phenomena from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives, reflecting her sustained interest in language as a system shaped by historical development and contemporary usage.
Her principal research interests lie at the intersection of several areas: the history of linguistic thought, media linguistics, literacy and e-literacy studies, and contact linguistics. Such interdisciplinary profile informs her scientific approach to language as a social, cultural, and historical phenomenon, with particular attention to how linguistic ideas evolve and circulate over time and across communicative contexts.
Dr. Pierucci is a member of the Società Italiana di Glottologia, Associazione Italiana di Linguistica Applicata, and the Henry Sweet Society, reflecting her active engagement with both national and international scholarly communities in linguistics and its history.
She is currently completing a monograph on the contribution of women to the history of linguistic thought in the eighteenth century, a project that seeks to recover and reassess often-overlooked intellectual trajectories within the field. In parallel, her research period at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) will focus on the under-explored role of the Scottish Enlightenment in shaping nineteenth-century American conceptions of language as a social phenomenon.
Project title: From Thomas Reid to William D. Whitney: The Scottish Way
Dr Pierucci’s research project investigates the intellectual legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment, focusing on the philosophy of Thomas Reid and its influence on modern conceptions of language as a social institution from the perspective of the history of linguistics. Eighteenth-century Scotland was a major centre of philosophical and social thought, and Reid’s philosophy of common sense exerted a lasting influence across Europe and North America, further disseminated through the work of Dugald Stewart.
The project argues that Scottish Enlightenment thought contributed significantly to modern reflections on the social dimension of language. It focuses particularly on the nineteenth-century American linguist William Dwight Whitney, whose conception of language as a social institution helped shape modern linguistic theory.
By examining Reid’s contribution to the history of linguistic thought, the project aims to reassess his place within a broader international intellectual context and to contribute to current debates in intellectual history, Enlightenment studies, and historiography of linguistics.