Stephen Hobday

Stephen Hobday was born at Hackney Mothers' Hospital and lived at Basterfield House on the Golden Lane Estate near the Barbican in London until he was four.

His parents then emigrated to Salisbury (Harare) Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) where they lived with his paternal grandparents till he was five.

They then emigrated to Perth in Western Australia where he went to Mosman Park Primary School. They then moved briefly to Three Springs, Western Australia.

From there they went to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he attended Clifton Primary School.

From there they moved back to Perth, Western Australia where he attended Nedlands Primary School and then Christ Church Grammar School. During this time he spent a year in Omaha, Nebraska where he attended Arbor Heights Junior Highschool. A year after his return to Perth, he was sent to Geelong Grammar School. Once he had obtained his Higher School Certificate there, he returned to Perth, where he enrolled for an arts degree at the University of Western Australia, and took up residence at St.Columba's College. During his time there he became a member of the Western Australian University Regiment.

Shortly after leaving university he moved to London, where he lived at the World's End in Chelsea. During his time there he worked for H. Allen Smith Wine Merchants and became a member of the The Parachute Regiment. He then enrolled in the Scots Guards Brigade Squad and was briefly at the Guards Depot.

Following this he began a series of trips to Paris, Athens, Madrid, Florence, Munich, finally settling in Paris where he remained for eleven years. During this time he worked for the European Office of the International Civil Aviation Organisation of the United Nations and took a degree in Japanese Language and Culture at the INALCO.

From there he move to Matsuyama on the island of Shikoku in Japan where he worked for two years for Matsuyama University. Shortly after returning to Paris he was appointed Lektor in Anglistik at the Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel in 1993.

He is at present a professor of Comparative Literature and Applied Linguistic Engineering at the Universita degli studi da Barletta San Ruggiero, Province of Barletta-Andria-Trani, in Apulia, Italy and is also a professor emeritus of Philosophy at the Universita degli studi d'Accadia Incoronata Carmine, provincia da Foggia, Apulia, Italy where he occasionally lectures in Economics.

He also continues to teach Literature, Applied Linguistic Engineering, Translation, and Landeskunde at the Christian-Albrechts Universitaet zu Kiel, Flensburg University, both in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany and at the University of Southern Denmark's Humanities Campus in the town of Sonderborg.

During his two years in Japan he taught English Literature, French Language and Economics at the Ehime University and Matsuyama University in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, Shikoku.

He obtained his PhD in Comparative Literature in 2003 at King's College London, University of London. His areas of interest are multiple and include Grammar, Cultural Semiotics, Cultural Anthropology, Picaresque Literature, Freakonomics, Oral Didactics, Mythology, Etymology and Oenology.

In 2004 he joined a team of motivated pedagogues as a social entrepreneur and enabler in a joint-venture between the EU and the Italian Ministry of Education for the insertion of mother-tongue language assistants into Italian secondary schools. He has been retained as a consultant by this scheme.

He has just finished running the Etymological Summer Symposium of the McGregor Institute in the Eifel, Germany, and is currently on sabbatical in Italy.