Jean, my very dear friend and colleague at Malmö University, is no longer with us. She is deeply missed.

Linguist Jean Hudson joined Malmö University a few years before me. I still remember her very warm welcome when I joined the School of International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER), where she was head of English Studies as part of the program Language, Migration, Globalisation.

Before this, in the 1990s, Jean conducted research at the University of Nottingham and worked for several years at Cambridge University Press as an ELT division Research Editor and Grammar Consultant. In this period, she designed and compiled a one-million word corpus of spontaneously spoken English (CANCODE: Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English). At Cambridge University Press, she was a senior consultant (1995-1999) as the corpus grew from one to five million words. The research post also involved consultancy in corpus development at the New York branch of CUP.

After her doctoral dissertation in English linguistics atLund University in 1998, Perspectives on fixedness: applied and theoretical (supervised by Prof. Jan Svartvik), she was recruited to Malmö University to build the new program in English linguistics. Under Jean’s initiative and leadership, the newly formed group of teachers developed an English education program that was unique in Sweden. It involved pedagogical renewal of English teaching through the integration of language, culture, and literature. Jean was a pioneer and a strong driving force in building up English linguistics at IMER. Together with her teaching team, Jean received the university’s pedagogical award in 2001 and was much-loved and appreciated by the students (Minnesord on Jean Hudson, Swedish Daily Sydsvenskan)

In 2005, Jean Hudson became Professor of English Linguistics at Malmö University. She was also a Professor at Luleå University of Technology in 2007-2008, and then returned to Malmö. During a more recent period, she taught and supervised students in English at Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University, Georgia (2023-2024). Her research in construction grammar was often based on spoken English with linguistic databases as the main tool.

As vice dean of the School of International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Malmö University, she visited Georgia in 2005, which marked the beginning of long-term, close contacts with the country. She participated in several scientific conferences and contributed to closer contacts between Malmö University and universities in Georgia. Jean much enjoyed Georgian culture and life in Georgia and made many colleagues and close friends there over the years, both in Tbilisi and Batumi. She brought her closest relatives, Bill, Eva, Daisy and Bilbo to enjoy her home in Batumi.

Jean Hudson is missed and fondly remembered by so many friends and colleagues in Sweden, Georgia, as well as internationally.