Monica Heller

Monica Heller (born June 1955) is a Canadian linguistic anthropologist and professor at the University of Toronto. She was the president of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) from 2013 to 2015.

Biography Heller was born in 1955, in Montreal, Quebec. Her father was a neurologist and her mother a medical sociologist. The political meanings of the uses of French and English in Quebec in the 1960s led to her interest in language and its influence on society. She attended Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology (minor in Linguistics) with honors in 1976.

American Anthropological Association Heller was executive program chair for the 2010 annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans. She served as vice president of the association for 2011–2013. In November 2013, she became president. She is one of the few scholars at a non-U.S. institution to lead the AAA in the organization's history.

Honors and awards 1998 Connaught Research Fellowship, University of Toronto (First edition 1999, London: Longman. ) 2007 (ed.) Bilingualism: A Social Approach. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2007 Discourses of Endangerment: Ideology and Interest in the Defense of Languages. (with Alexandre Duchêne) London: Continuum. According to WorldCat, the book is held in 688 libraries 2011 Paths to Postnationalism: A Critical Ethnography of Language and Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Monica Heller, with Mark Campbell, Phyllis Dalley, and Donna Patrick 2012 (ed.) Language in Late Capitalism: Pride and Profit. (with Alexandre Duchêne) London: Routledge.