[2] Born in 1956 and raised in South Africa during the turbulent apartheid years, Norton learnt at an early age the complex relationship between language, power, and identity.

Prior to her appointment at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1996, she was awarded postdoctoral fellowships from the US National Academy of Education Spencer Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Norton is centrally concerned with the ways in which language and literacy research can address larger social inequities, while supporting educational change at the grassroots level.

Her research seeks to make visible the relations of power that language learners and teachers navigate in diverse classrooms and communities.

In 2006, she co-founded the Africa Research Network on Applied Linguistics and Literacy, and is active in the innovative African Storybook in which her former UBC graduate students, Juliet Tembe and Sam Andema, are team members.