My recent research is concerned with the relations between political power, language pedagogy, and national language policy. In particular, I have studied historical examples of radical national language policies being used during periods of violent political transformation. Sudden impositions of new national language policies often amounted to severe violations of human rights, as they suddenly deprived targeted groups of the right to be educated and governed in their native language or in the language that had been in widespread use before a new political regime came to power.