Between 1988 and 1991 Sunderland was a tutor at the Institute for English Language Education, Lancaster University. Between 2000 and 2012 Sunderland was the Director of Studies of the PhD in Applied Linguistics by Thesis and Coursework at Lancaster University. On 27 November 2006, Sunderland's analysis on whether women talk more than men appeared on The Guardian. Sunderland's analysis found that there were no substantial differences between the amount of words that both genders used during one day. The analysis questioned the best-selling book, The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine. Between 2006 and 2008 she was the President of the International Gender and Language Association. In 2007 Sunderland received the National Teaching Fellow award for her work in initiating developing and running the PhD in Applied Linguistics by Thesis and Coursework and New Route PhD in Applied Linguistics programmes.
Research
Sunderland's research focused on language and gender and critical discourse analysis. More specifically, her research concentrates on language and gender in African contexts; the representation of gender and sexuality in children's picture books and in language textbooks; gender and sexuality in the language classroom.
Sunderland, J.. Gender and language: an advanced resource book. London: Routledge.
Sunderland, J.. Language, gender and children's fiction. London: Continuum.
Articles
Sunderland, J.. The decline of man. Journal of Pragmatics 16, 505–522.
Sunderland, J.. Gender in the EFL classroom. ELT Journal 46, 81–91.
Sunderland, J.. Girls being quiet: A problem for foreign language classrooms? Language Teaching Research 2, 48–62.
Sunderland, J.. Baby entertainer, bumbling assistant and line manager: discourses of fatherhood in parentcraft texts. Discourse and Society 11, 249–274.
Sunderland, J.. New understandings of gender and language classroom research: texts, teacher talk and student talk. Language Teaching Research 4, 149–173.
Sunderland, J., & Mcglashan, M.. The linguistic, visual and multimodal representation of two-Mum and two-Dad families in children's picturebooks. Language and Literature, 21, 189–210.
Sunderland, J.. “Brown Sugar”: the textual construction of femininity in two “tiny texts”. Gender and Language, 6, 105–129.
Sunderland, J., & Mcglashan, M.. Looking at picturebook covers multimodally: the case of two-mum and two-dad picturebooks. Visual Communication, 12, 473–496. doi:
