Profile

I am currently working on a Welcome Trust-funded multi-disciplinary project on research culture, where I investigate ethics and sustainability policymaking in higher education institutions. My work employs corpus linguistics methods and participatory research design to critically examine institutional responses to societal challenges.

My broader research interests, shaped by my doctoral and postdoctoral projects, focus on three interconnected strands:

Strand 1: Institutional policy analysis

I am keen on examining how universities conduct policy frameworks to address pressing societal issues, with a particular focus on AI governance and net-zero strategies & initiatives. Using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, I uncover the implicit ideologies shaping institutional policymaking. For example, my ongoing study on university sustainability reporting reveals how institutions position themselves as primary agents of change while marginalising the roles of students and staff.

This strand of work builds on my previous leadership in institutional race equality initiatives, where I led the university-wide surveys and facilitated focus groups on barriers faced by racial and ethnic minorities. discussions around barriers faced by ethnic and racial minorities. The discussions on race equality, intersectionality between race, gender, sexuality, and disability have been an eye opener. These experiences highlighted the power of participatory methods in shaping equitable policies – an approach I now extend to AI ethics and sustainability governance.

Strand 2: Analysis of sustainability communication & greenwashing

This line of research is motivated by my personal interest and enhanced by the current research culture project. I analyse sustainability narratives across industries, including the fashion industry green claims (forthcoming in International Journal of Business Communication); media framing of green backlash (revised & resubmitted); and clean energy transition (in progress).

I work with Mark Ryan, who is an environmental marketing researcher with extensive experience in calculating the carbon impact of fashion firms through life-cycle analysis. In the context of global warming, major brands and corporations worldwide are responding to climate change by incorporating sustainable development practices to varying extents. These entities market their commitment to sustainability, emphasising social and environmental dimensions. However, some engage more in greenwashing than genuine commitment.

Strang 3: Media bias & interruptions in political settings

This is an extension of my doctoral study on interruption in everyday setting in Chinese. This strand investigates power dynamics in political interviews manifested through interruptions. My specific interest lies in investigating alleged media bias through a meticulous examination of interruptions initiated by both interviewers and interviewees in mainstream Western media outlets. This research initiative is prompted by my observation of netizens' expressions on Chinese social media platforms (see my previous paper on how netizens adopt innovative linguistic strategies to criticise public figures, it is Top 3 most cited article in Discourse & Society in recent 3 years). There is a prevalent sentiment that Western media display a substantial bias against China. Netizens often assert that interview hosts manipulate conversations by consistently interrupting guests whose perspectives diverge from the media's negative narrative about China. To empirically test this perception, I am conducting a pilot study analysing interruptions in political interviews.