About
Geoff Barnbrook has been a lecturer in English Language at the University of Birmingham since 1991 and a Senior Lecturer since 2005. He received his PhD from Birmingham in 1995 for work on the grammar of definition sentences and their automatic analysis under the supervision of Professor John Sinclair.
Biography
Geoff was born in Birmingham in 1949. He went to the King Edward VI Camp Hill School, leaving in 1967. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1973 and worked for accountancy practices in Birmingham, Ludlow and Rome before moving into accountancy tuition in 1979. In 1984 he began the part-time first year of an English degree at Birmingham. He graduated in 1988 and joined the School of English as a Research Associate in 1989.
Teaching
Geoff currently teaches a second year language option on Development and Variation in English and part of a third year module on Linguistic Theory. He also lectures on aspects of historical linguistics and lexicology.
Postgraduate supervision
Geoff has supervised students from around the world on topics related to corpus linguistics, lexicology and historical linguistics.
Research
He has been involved in a number of EC-funded research projects, including PAROLE/SIMPLE, and TELRI.
His main research interests are in contemporary and historical applications of corpus linguistics and lexicography, and his publications include Language and Computers: A Practical Introduction to the Computer Analysis of Language (1996, Edinburgh University Press) and Defining Language: A local grammar of definition sentences (2002, John Benjamins).
Other activities
Geoff regularly appears in theatrical productions, including original plays and traditional productions of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.