Research Overview

I am a Reader in Linguistics and English Language based in the School of Social Sciences. In my research, I explore the relationship between discourse and social life. At this interface, I am particularly interested in how identities are discursively negotiated and represented with respect to issues such as health and illness, the environment and animal rights, and gender and sexuality. I use a wide range of methodological approaches in my research, but have a particular interest in corpus linguistic, critical and multimodal approaches to discourse studies.

I am a Fulbright scholar and currently hold a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship. As part of this Fellowship, I lead a team on the 'Public Discourses of Dementia: Challenging Stigma and Promoting Personhood' research programme. As part of this research, funded in total approximately £2 million by UKRI, my team and I examine linguistic and visual representations of dementia across a range of public contexts. Alongside this, we also work with stakeholder partners and advocacy groups to develop ways of communicating about dementia which promote genuine awareness of, and challenge stigma around, dementia.

Fellowships and awards

• UKRI Future Leader Fellow (since 2022).
• Fulbright All-Disciplines Award (2024).
• Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (since 2022).

Editorial roles

• Associate Editor of the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (John Benjamins).
• Co-Editor of the Corpus and Discourse book series (Bloomsbury, with Prof. Michaela Mahlberg).
• Co-Editor of the Camebridge Elements series, Critical Discourse Studies (Cambridge University Press, with Prof. Veronika Koller).
• Section Co-Editor for the Corpus Linguistics section of the Elsevier Encylopedia of Language and Linguistics (Elsevier, with Dr David Wright).
• I currently serve on the editorial boards of the following journals: Applied Corpus Linguistics, Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, Discourse & Society, Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine, Journal of Corpus Approaches to Chinese Social Science, Languages, Texts and Society, Research in Corpus Linguistics, Qualitative Health Communication, Social Semiotics.

Funding council roles

• Academic Advisor on the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Assessor College.
• Member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Peer Review College.
• Member of the Expert Review College for Research Foundation - Flanders.
• Formerly: member of the ESRC Grant Assessment Panel; member of the AHRC Advisory Board.

Subject association roles

• Elected member of the Executive Committee of the International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English (ICAME).
• Formerly: Elected member of the Executive Committee of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL); Elected both as Convenor and Communications Officer of BAAL's Corpus Linguistics Special Interest Group.