Edgar W. Schneider

Edgar W. Schneider (born 30 May 1954) is an Austrian-German linguist. He is emeritus professor of English linguistics at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where he held the chair of English linguistics from 1993 to 2020. From 2021 to 2023, he was a visiting senior fellow at the National University of Singapore for one semester each year. He is known in World Englishes research mainly as the originator of the Dynamic Model of the evolution of Postcolonial Englishes. In a 2025 monograph Schneider advocates the application of complex dynamic systems theory to the understanding of language evolution and variability.

Education and career Schneider was born in Kirchdorf an der Krems, Austria. He studied at University of Graz between 1972 and 1978. Later, he completed his PhD in 1981 and his habilitation in 1987 at the University of Bamberg, Germany. In 1988 he was an interim professor at the University of Trier, and in 1988/1989 an adjunct associate professor at the University of Georgia, US. In 1989 he became a full professor at the Free University of Berlin. In 1993, he took over the chair at Regensburg. In Regensburg he founded the Research Center for World Englishes. Schneider was dean of studies at the Faculty of Language, Literature, and Cultural Studies of the University of Regensburg (2007–2009) and dean of the faculty from 2009 to 2011.

Schneider was the president of the International Society for the Linguistics of English (ISLE) in 2016–2018. He edited the scholarly journal English World-Wide (Amsterdam: Benjamins) from 1997 to 2013 and its associated book series Varieties of English Around the World from 1997 to 2011. He was a co-editor of the voluminous Handbook of Varieties of English (2004) and also of the Cambridge Handbook of World Englishes (2020), and is the author of an introductory textbook, English Around the World (2011, 2nd ed. 2020). He edits a series of short monographs for Cambridge University Press, called Elements: World Englishes.