The Faculty is delighted to congratulate Sam Wolfe on the award of a Philip Leverhulme Prize. He will use his prize to investigate factors that encourage the syntax of a language to change over time, or to remain stable. Historical linguistics has traditionally been synonymous with the study of language change, but is now on at the brink of the idea that stability can be as intriguing as change, and as worth trying to explain. Sam’s work is at the cutting edge of this fast-moving field.