Alastair Pennycook is Emeritus Professor (formerly Distinguished Professor) of Language, Society and Education at UTS. He is also a Research Professor at the Centre for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan at the University of Oslo, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

He is known for his work in three main areas:
Critical approaches to the global spread of English and English language teaching: The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language - now a Routledge Linguistics Classic - and Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows (both winners of the the BAAL Book Prize);

Critical applied linguistics: Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical Introduction (second edition published in 2021) and Posthumanist Applied Linguistics – which won the BAAL Book Prize in 2018);

Sociolinguistic studies of multilingualism, diversity, popular culture and mobility: Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places, which also won the BAAL Book Prize, Popular culture, voice and linguistic diversity, with Sender Dovchin and Shaila Sultana, Disinventing and Reconstituting Language, with Sinfree Makoni, Metrolingualism: Language in the city (with Emi Otsuji), and Language as a Local Practice.

His most recent book (with Sinfree Makoni) is Innovations and challenges in applied linguistics from the Global South (Routledge).

Alastair holds a PADI Master Diver Certificate and is involved in marine ecology and reef preservation projects such as Saving Philippines Reefs (SPR) as part of the Coastal Conservation and Education Foundation.