I am a Lecturer in English Language in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Aston University, UK. Before joining Aston, I held post-doctoral research posts at Cambridge Assessment English and the University of Leeds, and worked as a part-time Associate Lecturer at Lancaster University.
I am an applied linguist with a particular interest in corpus linguistics, both from a methodological and analytical perspective. A lot of my work to date has focussed on the creation and analysis of spoken corpora: my monograph “Overcoming Challenges in Corpus Construction”, which describes my work on the creation of the spoken component of the British National Corpus 2014, was published by Routledge in 2020. I am currently conducting research which uses this and other spoken corpora to explore recent change in spoken grammar and discourse.
I am also interested in the role of language in mainstream UK education. I am currently working with the University of Leeds on the ESRC-funded project Linguistic Challenges of the Transition from Primary to Secondary School, which involves the creation and analysis of written and spoken corpora of the academic language that students typically encounter in primary and secondary school.
More broadly, I maintain an interest in language in the news media and other public discourse spaces.
I also offer linguistics consultancy on a freelance basis, regularly working with non-academic partners to apply linguistic research to industry challenges.
Qualifications:
BA Hons Linguistics, Lancaster University, 2013
MA Language and Linguistics, Lancaster University, 2014
PhD Linguistics, Lancaster University, 2018
Curriculum Vitae | Google Scholar | ORCiD
