CASTRO-CHAO, NOELIA

Noelia Castro-Chao holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Santiago de Compostela (September 2014), an MA in Advanced English Studies (September 2015) and a doctorate in English Linguistics (May 2020). Her PhD research was carried out at Santiago de Compostela under funding from a four-year postgraduate grant (ref. FPU 2014/03208; 28/10/2015 - 27/10/2019) from the Spanish Ministry of Education.

Noelia has worked as Invited Lecturer (March-May 2020) and Substitute Lecturer in English (February-June 2021) at the Department of English, French and German of the University of Vigo. Between July 2021 and December 2022 she held a competitive postdoctoral contract (ref. ED481B2021-046) funded by the Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Universidade of the Regional Government of Galicia. She is now an Assistant Lecturer ('Ayudante Doctora') at the Complutense University of Madrid.

As an ERASMUS exchange student (2012-2013) Noelia studied at the University of York, UK. As a postgraduate student and postdoc she has carried out research at the Department of Linguistics and English Language of the University of Edinburgh (September-November 2018; funding: MECD grant EST17/00514, €5.010; advisor: Graeme Trousdale), at the Department of English, French and German of the University of Vigo (June-July 2020; advisor: Javier Pérez-Guerra), and at the Department of Linguistics of KU Leuven (January-June 2022; advisor: Hendrik De Smet).

In November 2016 Noelia received the ‘Catalina Montes’ Award to the best paper presented by a PhD student at the 40th AEDEAN International Conference (University of Zaragoza at Huesca, 9-11 November 2016).

Noelia has experience in the organization of research meetings, such as the VI Encontro da Mocidade Investigadora (12-13 June 2018), sponsored by the International Doctorate School at the University of Santiago de Compostela, and the 6th Prescriptivism Conference: Modelling Prescriptivism - Language, Literature, and Speech Communities (23-25 September 2021, University of Vigo).

Contact information:

Departamento de Estudios Ingleses: Lingüística y Literatura
Facultad de Filología
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Plaza Menéndez Pelayo s/n
28040 Madrid
E-mail: ncastrochao@ucm.es

MA Dissertation (September 2015): Changes in argument structure: developments in impersonal constructions since Late Middle English. A preliminary corpus-based study. Supervisor: Teresa Fanego.

PhD Dissertation (12 May 2020): Changes in argument structure: impersonal constructions in Middle and Early Modern English, with special reference to verbs of Desire. A corpus-based study (International Doctorate; grade: Cum Laude). Supervisors: Teresa Fanego and Nuria Yáñez-Bouza (UVigo). Examiners: David Denison (University of Manchester), Belén Méndez-Naya (USC), Paula Rodríguez-Puente (University of Oviedo).

H-index & Publications:

(Forthcoming in 2025). "The other side of CLCT: When fear disrupts collaboration". In Proceedings of the 47th AEDEAN International Conference, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, 6-8 November 2024, ed. by Montserrat Martínez-Vázquez et al. Seville: Universidad Pablo de Olavide. [First author, with Tamara Bouso.]

(2024). "Hard and Soft Sciences in contrast: ESP mediated by Collaborative Learning (CL) and Communication Technologies (CT)". In Nuevos avances en educación: Metodologías didácticas para la enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras y educación física, ed. by María Valero Redondo, César Méndez Rodríguez & Marina Díaz Rodríguez. Madrid: Dykinson S.L., pp. 292-323. ISBN: 978-84-1070-332-2. [First author, with Tamara Bouso.]

(2024). "La enseñanza del inglés a través de actividades colaborativas mediadas por TIC: La perspectiva del alumnado de los Grados en Ingeniería Química y Lengua y Literatura Inglesas". In Debates y experiencias en torno a la innovación docente: visión actual y prospectiva, coord. by Pilar Vicente Fernández & Raquel Pinilla Gómez. Seville: Ediciones Egregius (Colección Actas y Resúmenes), pp. 385-387. ISBN: 978-84-1177-078-1. [First author, with Tamara Bouso.]

(2023). "El aprendizaje colaborativo mediado por TIC: la percepción de estudiantes de ingeniería química en tiempos de pandemia". Revista Nebrija de Lingüística Aplicada a la Enseñanza de las Lenguas - RNAEL 17 nº 34: 120-149.

(2022). "Long, lust and thirst: The development of impersonal verbs of Desire in Early Modern English from the perspective of Construction Grammar". In Moving beyond the pandemic: English and American studies in Spain, ed. by Francisco Gallardo-del-Puerto, María del Carmen Camus-Camus & Jesús Ángel González-López. Santander: Editorial de la Universidad de Cantabria, pp. 48-55. ISBN: 978-84-19024-15-2.

(2022). "The emergence and loss of the English minor complementizers till and until". Journal of English Linguistics 50(4): 354-383. Published in OA with funding (2.747 euros) granted by the Vicerrectorate for Scientific Policy of the University of Santiago de Compostela.

(2022). "Constructions in competition: The development of the impersonal verb hunger and the adjectival periphrasis be hungry in Early Modern English". Studia Neophilologica 94(3): 273-296. https://doi.org/10.1080/00393274.2020.1851297. [Available in OA].

(2021). "The development of long in Early Modern English: Impersonal verbs of Desire in focus". ATLANTIS. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies 43(1): 110-132.

(2021). Argument structure in flux: The development of impersonal constructions in Middle and Early Modern English, with special reference to verbs of Desire. (Linguistic Insights 274). Bern: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-0343-4189-9; 277 pp. Reviewed by Ayumi Miura, Research in Corpus Linguistics 10/1 (2022): 213-227; Florent Perek, English Language and Linguistics 27/3 (2023): 882-888; Ignacio Calle-Rubio, NEXUS AEDEAN 2023/1: 61-64.

(2020). "Changes in argument structure: The development of English impersonal constructions from 1350 onwards. A corpus-based study". Actas de las II Jornadas Doctorales de la Universidad de Murcia, 31 mayo-2 junio 2016. Murcia: Escuela Internacional de Doctorado, pp. 1-5. ISBN 978-84-608-9778-1. [Published online].

(2019). "Changes in argument structure in Early Modern English with special reference to verbs of Desire: A case study of lust". Research in Corpus Linguistics 7: 129-154.

(2018). “Impersonal constructions in Early Modern English: A case study of like and please”. In María Ferrández San Miguel & Claus-Peter Neumann, eds. Taking stock to look ahead: Celebrating forty years of English Studies in Spain. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de la Universidad de Zaragoza, pp. 177-184.

conference presentations:

12-14 November 2025: 48th AEDEAN Conference, UPV/EHU, Vitoria-Gasteiz: "Collaborative vs. individual learning: Students' perceptions across disciplines". [First author, with Tamara Bouso.]

6-8 November 2024: 47th AEDEAN Conference, Pablo de Olavide University, Seville: "ESP, Collaborative Learning, and Communication Technologies: Insights from Chemical Engineering and English Language and Literature Students". [First author, with Tamara Bouso.]

26 April 2024: ¿Qué (no) sabemos sobre la diversidad lingüística? Jornada sobre variación y actitudes lingüísticas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Filología: "Raising awareness of language diversity in the English grammar classroom".

23-24 April 2024: III Congreso Internacional CIINECO (Innovación Docente, Educación y Transferencia del Conocimiento): "La enseñanza del inglés a través de actividades colaborativas mediadas por TIC: La perspectiva del alumnado de los Grados en Ingeniería Química y Lengua y Literatura Inglesas". [First author, with Tamara Bouso.]

15 June 2023: invited talk (online) at the Informative Session on Postdoctoral Contracts and Careers organized by SAAS (Spanish Association for American Studies) Young Scholars.

26-28 April 2023: 40 Congreso Internacional de la Asociación Española de Lingüística Aplicada (AESLA), University of Extremadura: "La implementación del aprendizaje colaborativo mediado por TIC en Inglés Técnico: la percepción de estudiantes de ingeniería química".

19-20 January 2023: invited presentation at the International Workshop Modelling the Linguistic Architecture of English: Cognitive and Empirical Developments, University of Vigo: "Modelling linguistic loss: A case study from the domain of clausal complementation".

26 April 2022: "Lost in change: History and development of the English minor complementizers till and until". Invited presentation at the Research Unit FunC (Functional and Cognitive Linguistics: Grammar and Typology), KU Leuven.

24-26 November 2021: 44th AEDEAN International Conference, University of Cantabria: "Long, lust and thirst: On the development of impersonal verbs of Desire in Early Modern English"

30 August - 3 September 2021: SLE 2021 - 54th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea: "Pathways from adverbial subordination to complementation: The case of English till and until"

18-21 August 2021: ICAME 42, Technische Universität Dortmund (Germany): "Minor complementisers in the temporal domain: English till and until" (full paper)

7-11 June 2021: ICEHL-21, University of Leiden: "The development of impersonal verbs in Early Modern English: A case study of hunger"

4 June 2021: IDAES Graduate Day 2021, University of Vigo: participation in the round table Carreira pre- e posdoutoral en Estudos Ingleses. Convenor: Javier Pérez Guerra (UVigo); participants: Juan Ignacio Oliva (University of La Laguna), Vanesa Vázquez Novo (University of A Coruña), Noelia Castro-Chao (UVigo).

28-30 April 2021: XII International Conference on Corpus Linguistics (CILC2021), University of Murcia: "The development of English verbs of Desire: A case study of thirst"

14-16 April 2021: AESLA 2021 (International Conference of the Spanish Association for Applied Linguistics). University of A Coruña: "The development of the verb thirst in the history of English: A corpus-based study"

15 December 2020: invited speaker at the 25th ELC Research Seminar, Universities of Santiago de Compostela and Vigo: “Pathways to English complement clauses: From adverbial subordination to complementation in object territory”

5 December 2020: Linguistweets. The First International Twitter Conference on Linguistics, Brazilian Linguistics Association (ABRALIN): "The demise of impersonal constructions"

6 November 2020: IDAES Graduate Day 2020, University of A Coruña: "From adverbial subordination to complementation: On minor complementisers in Early Modern English" 

30 May - 3 June 2018: ICAME 39, University of Tampere (Finland): "Throwing some light on the development of impersonal constructions: A case study of lust (after)"

4 May 2018: IDAES Graduate Day 2018, University of Vigo: "The development of formerly impersonal verbs of desire in Early Modern English: A corpus-based study"

4-5 April 2017: Santiago-Leuven-Edinburgh Seminar on Grammatical Variation and Change in English, KU Leuven: “Impersonal constructions in Early Modern English: A case study of long (for)”

9-11 November 2016: 40th AEDEAN Conference, University of Zaragoza (Huesca): “Impersonal constructions in Early Modern English: A case study of like and please”

31 May - 2 June 2016: II Jornadas Doctorales de la Universidad de Murcia, University of Murcia: "The development of English impersonal constructions from 1350 onwards"

19 May 2016: IDAES Graduate Day 2016, University of Santiago de Compostela: "Changes in transitivization in the history of English: From impersonal to personal constructions"

15 May 2015: IDAES Graduate Day 2015, University of Vigo: "Changes in argument structure: Developments in impersonal constructions from Late Middle English onwards. A corpus-based study"