Staff in Linguistics and Communication

We have been at the forefront of research in English Language and Linguistics for over fifty years and we continue to make cutting-edge contributions to the field.

Full list of Academic Staff in English Language and Applied Linguistics

Lorraine Adriano

Lorraine Adriano

Teaching Fellow

I am a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Linguistics and Communication. I have a background in teaching English in England and Italy.

Dr Bissie Anderson

Assistant Professor in Digital Media and Communications (Digital Journalism)

I am an Assistant Professor in Digital Media and Communications, specialising in Digital Journalism. My research focuses on knowledge production in digital journalism, participatory journalism, community media, and interactive storytelling. 

Dr Bettina Bódi

Assistant Professor in Digital Media

Dr Bettina Bódi is an Assistant Professor in Digital Media. Her research specialisms are digital media and videogames, with a focus on agency. Her teaching focuses on game studies, social media, television studies, and cultural studies.

Dr Peter Browning

Dr Peter Browning

Teaching Fellow

Peter is a sociolinguist with a background in English language teaching and teacher education who works at the intersections of Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and TESOL. He has carried out research and taught in a number of HE contexts both in the UK and abroad and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

David Callaghan

David Callaghan

Teaching Fellow

I am a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Linguistics and Communication. My research incorporates corpus linguistic methodology and is primarily concerned with irony, humour and language creativity.

Dr Gareth Carrol

Dr Gareth Carrol

Senior Lecturer in Psycholinguistics

I am a senior lecturer in psycholinguistics, with a particular interest in idiomatic and formulaic language in native and non-native speakers.

Dr Alex Christiansen

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

I am a postdoctoral research fellow on the ESRC-funded Influencer Stories of Mental Health and Young People project led by Dr Ruth Page in collaboration with Dr Michael Larkin (Aston University) and Professor Paul Crawford (University of Nottingham). My current focus within the role is on identifying and categorising the influencer representation of mental health on social media.

As a ...

Professor Dagmar Divjak

Professor Dagmar Divjak

Professorial Research Fellow in Cognitive Linguistics and Language Cognition

My main research interest is in understanding how our cognitive capacities give rise to the patterns we see in language and how language learners might use these patterns to build up knowledge of their language. I work with the Out Of Our Minds team to understand language knowledge and optimize language learning and am Editor-in-Chief of the journal Cognitive Linguistics.

David Evans

Teaching Fellow

I have a background in English language teaching. My main research interest is in the interface between language teaching and corpus linguistics.

Ms Samantha Ford

Ms Samantha Ford

Research Assistant

Samantha has worked as a Research Assistant for the EMMA project since 2018 alongside Professor Jeannette Littlemore, Dr Paula Pérez-Sobrino, and Dr David Houghton that explores multimodal metaphor in advertising. The EMMA project investigates how multimodal metaphor is used creatively in advertising across the world and involves collaborations with international advertising agencies to ...

Dr Matteo Fuoli

Dr Matteo Fuoli

Associate Professor in Corpus-based Discourse Analysis

My work combines corpus linguistic and experimental methods with discourse analysis to study the linguistic factors at the heart of important societal issues such as trust, polarization and climate change.

Dr Jason Grafmiller

Dr Jason Grafmiller

Lecturer in corpus-based sociolinguistics

I am a lecturer in corpus-based sociolinguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Communication. My research focuses on the quantitative analysis of grammatical variation.

Professor Jack Grieve

Professor Jack Grieve

Professor of Corpus Linguistics

My research focuses on understanding language variation and change through the quantitative analysis of large corpora of natural language data.

Dr Nicholas Groom

Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics

I am a corpus linguist. The main focus of my work is on using computers to study latent patterning in very large collections of naturally occurring language data.

Dr Gregory Hadley

Dr Gregory Hadley

Teaching Fellow

Gregory Hadley received his PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Birmingham (UK), where his primary focus was in the Sociology of English Language Teaching. A Professor of Sociolinguistics and Western Cultural Studies at Niigata University, Japan, and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, he is also the author of English for Academic Purposes in Neoliberal Universities: A ...

Robert Holland

Lecturer in Applied Linguistics

I am a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics and Communication at the University of Birmingham. I have a background in English Language teaching, teacher-training and language education project management.

Dr Jing Huang

Dr Jing Huang

Assistant Professor
Deputy Director for MA Campus-based Programmes

Dr Jing Huang is a sociolinguist researching identification, multilingualism, and cross-cultural communication in society. Her teaching covers multiple areas in sociolinguistics, language education, and interpretivist methodologies.

Professor Susan Hunston

Professor Susan Hunston

Professor of English Language

I have a background in English Language and Applied Linguistics and have worked in three countries. I enjoy research and teaching at all levels and I especially like supervising Doctoral Researchers.

Professor Suganthi John

Professor Suganthi John

Professor of English Language
Deputy Director of Education (Distance and Digital Education)

I am a Professor of English Language in the Department of Linguistics and Communication at the University of Birmingham. I teach a range of modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and supervise PhD students in Linguistics and Communication. My research focusses on self-representation and identity in academic texts. I am also interested in writing development across ...

Dr Alexander Laffer

Teaching Fellow

Dr Alexander Laffer is a lecturer and research and editorial consultant. His academic research combines discourse analysis and literary linguistics and he is currently exploring the interaction between digital fiction and empathy. He has taught modules in digital media discourse, professional communication, sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. He has received Santander Universities funding to ...

Professor Jeannette Littlemore

Professor Jeannette Littlemore

Professor of Linguistics and Communication

Jeannette Littlemore is a Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Communication at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the role played by metaphor and metonymy in the understanding and expression of emotional experiences. She also explores the role played by metaphor and metonymy in language learning and cross-cultural communication. 

Her ...

Dr Vinicius Macuch Silva

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

I’m a post-doctoral researcher working in the Making Numbers Meaningful project led by Bodo Winter.

I’m interested in how people use language to create and manage meaning in communication, both when interacting with others and when producing and interpreting language in various other settings. In my research I use primarily quantitative empirical methods, including controlled ...

Professor Michaela Mahlberg

Professor Michaela Mahlberg

Honorary Professor of Corpus Linguistics

As a corpus linguist, I am interested in language as a social phenomenon and the way in which we use language to understand and shape the world we live in. A large part of my research focuses on the language of Dickens’s fiction, literary linguistics, and discourse analysis.

I am currently Principal Investigator on the AHRC funded CLiC Dickens project.

I speak about Corpus ...

Joanne McCuaig

Joanne McCuaig

Teaching Fellow

Joanne McCuaig is a Doctoral Researcher investigating the language use of purportedly co-opted medical terminology from psychology. She uses corpus linguistics and discourse analysis for her interdisciplinary research.

Dr Marta Morgado

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

I collaborate with the deaf community in Guinea-Bissau (West Africa). I did my PhD work on three West African sign languages, two used by micro-communities – Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana) with about 250 years, and Langue des Signes de Bouakako (Ivory Coast) with about 50 years, and one by a macro-community, Língua Gestual Guineense (Guinea-Bissau) with about 20 years. I compared ...

Dr Akira Murakami

Dr Akira Murakami

Birmingham Fellow

My applied linguistics research spans two areas, second language acquisition (SLA) and corpus linguistics. I am trying to bring the two areas together so that developmental research in SLA can benefit from large-scale corpus data.

Dr Gerardo Ortega

Dr Gerardo Ortega

Associate Professor

I am an Associate Professor interested in the acquisition and emergence of manual communication. I specialise in the acquisition of a sign language as a first and second language, sign language processing, and the similarities between sign and gesture. I also explore the role of gesture and iconicity in sign language emergence and evolution.

Professor Ruth Page

Professor Ruth Page

Professor of Applied Linguistics
Program Director, BA Digital Media and Communications

Ruth Page is a Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Communication at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on the language that people use when the communicate in social media, with a focus on storytelling. She has published studies that cover a range of mediated forms, including blogs, social network sites and video-sharing platforms. Her ...

Dr Amanda Patten

Dr Amanda Patten

Associate Professor in Historical Linguistics
Head of Education for the School of EDACS

I am an Associate Professor in Historical Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Communication. I am also the Head of Education for the School of EDACS.

Dr Florent Perek

Dr Florent Perek

Associate Professor in Cognitive Linguistics
Deputy Director of the Centre for Corpus Research

I am a cognitive linguist, a quantitative corpus linguist, and a construction grammarian. I teach classes on topics surrounding the grammar and semantics of English.

Dr Marcus Perlman

Dr Marcus Perlman

Associate Professor in Linguistics and Communication
Acting Director of PGR for ELAL

I am an Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics. My research examines iconicity in speech and gesture, with special interest in the evolution of human communication. I also study the gesturing and vocal behaviour of great apes.

Dr Garry Plappert

Dr Garry Plappert

Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics

Corpus Linguistics, EAP and the linguistics of epistemology.

Heidi Proctor

Heidi Proctor

Research Fellow

I am a sign language linguist, focussing on British Sign Language (BSL). I am working part-time on the SignMorph project, using both the BSL Corpus and experimental methods to investigate the morphology of BSL.  In addition, I am completing a PhD at the Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre, University College London, examining the structure of noun phrases within BSL.

Dr Abi Rhodes

Dr Abi Rhodes

Assistant Professor in Language and Communication

I am an experienced higher education lecturer and third sector project coordinator with an interest in social movement communication and grassroots storytelling. My main areas of research include the political and social role of digital, new and legacy media and I specialise in content and discourse analysis in the digital environment.

Professor Adam Schembri

Professor Adam Schembri

Professor of Linguistics

I am a Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Communication at the University of Birmingham.  I teach modules on sociolinguistics, language and gesture, and linguistic diversity. My research focuses on the linguistics of sign languages, especially Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and British Sign Language (BSL).

Dr Petra Schoofs

Dr Petra Schoofs

Lecturer in TESOL

I have joined Birmingham University in September 2015, and am teaching MA modules on campus. I am also responsible for Distance Learning modules and DL tutors. My research interests lie in bi- and multilingualism, psycholinguistics and in application of these to TESOL.

Dr Joe Spencer-Bennett

Dr Joe Spencer-Bennett

Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics
Head of Department for Linguistics and Communication

I teach on a number of the department’s programmes. I research relations between language, communication and politics, using approaches from discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and archival research. My current research looks at issues to do with the simplicity, informality and clarity of political language, in Britain especially.

Dr Paul Thompson

Dr Paul Thompson

Reader in Applied Corpus Linguistics
Director, Centre for Corpus Research

I have been at the University of Birmingham since September 2009, and I am the Acting Head of Department of Linguistics and Communications (till 31st August 2024) as well as being Director of the Centre for Corpus Research. I am an applied corpus linguist with particular interest in specialised discourses. I am also an Editor-in-Chief of the Applied Corpus Linguistics journal.

Dr Martine van Driel

Dr Martine van Driel

Assistant Professor

My research focuses on autistic communication, taking a neurodiverse and linguistic approach. I centre autistic participants and experiences in my research and am autistic myself. My work aims to understand authentic autistic communication to educate neurotypical populations and increase autism acceptance. My research methods include digital ethnography, discourse analysis, computer-mediated ...

Dr Crayton Walker

Dr Crayton Walker

Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics

I am a lecturer working in the Department of Linguistics and Communication. I work with both undergraduate and postgraduate students who are following our campus and distance programmes. My main areas of expertise are associated with language teaching and corpus linguistics. 

Professor Bodo Winter

Professor Bodo Winter

Professor of Linguistics

I am a Professor of Linguistics and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow. My research uses data science-driven linguistics to study multimodal communication, including iconicity, gesture and metaphor. For my Future Leaders Fellowship, I investigate how people communicate numerical information across different communication channels. 

 

Dr Fei Xie

Dr Fei Xie

Research Associate

I am a Research Associate in Corpus Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and Communication.

Emeritus and Honorary Academic Staff

Professor Chris Kennedy

Honorary Senior Research Fellow in English Language

I started my teaching career as a volunteer in Nigeria, followed by several ELT jobs in Africa and South-East Asia, before joining Birmingham to set up ELT teacher development and applied linguistics programmes.

Dr Rosamund Moon

Honorary Research Fellow

My research and specialist teaching is primarily in the broad field of lexis and also lexicography.

Professor Wolfgang Teubert

Emeritus Professor

Now increasingly retired, I gradually move away from corpus linguistics into discourse analysis, from a hermeneutic and neo-pragmatic perspective, believing that the social and natural world we encounter is constituted by the discourse in which we take part.