Contact
Biography
I have conducted research on professional communication with a range of national and multinational organisations for the past 20 years. I am the Founder and Director of Linguistic Profiling for Professionals, an innovative research-based consultancy and business unit based in the Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics at The University of Nottingham: www.nottingham.ac.uk/lipp
I have expertise in corporate business communication and health communication, including global issues of equality, diversty and inclusion and have published extensively in these areas. Since 2003 I have worked on numerous initiatives with colleagues as part of the University's Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics. I have been the School's Director of Business and External Engagement since 2010. I have also worked with the Executive Education team of the University's Business School, delivering effective leadership communication courses as part of their High Performance Leadership Development programmes.
Expertise Summary
BA, MA, PhD Areas of expertise - business communication; health communication; sociolinguistics; discourse analysis; language and gender; equality, diversity and inclusion at work.
Research Summary
My main areas of research are sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics. I am particularly interested in investigating professional communication and I have conducted research and… read more
Current Research
My main areas of research are sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics. I am particularly interested in investigating professional communication and I have conducted research and consultancies in a wide range of businesses, healthcare settings and organisations nationally and internationally. I am particularly interested in researching issues around equality, diversity and inclusion and how linguistics can be used to bring positive change to workplace communication practices and communication in public spaces.
I am the Founder and Director of Linguistic Profiling for Professionals, a research and business unit, using linguistics research to investigate a wide range of communication issues in the workplace including language and equality, the language of leadership, health communication and digital communication.
Current projects include the interdisciplinary EPSRC-funded STEMM Change project, where we are researching and re-writing recruitment and promotions language to enable diverse pools of candidates to be recruited and rewarded appropriately, avoiding unconscious bias and exclusion. I am also currently working on a Research England award with Dr. Lucy Jones to investigate government communications with young people and how communication strategies have changed for charities and NGOs working with members of Generation Z who are at risk during the Covid-19 pandemic.
I have also worked on evaluating the language of misogyny hate crime in Nottinghamshire locally with Nottinghamshire, Police, The Police and Crime Commissioner and Nottingham Women's Centre and nationally with MPs and grassroots organisations, in collaboration with Loretta Trickett at Nottingham Trent University. Our work has directly fed into the recent Law Commission Review of Hate Crime (2020) and the work of the Women and Equalities Select Committee in the UK Parliament.
I have recently headed up an AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Networks award, working with academics, NGOs and charities in East Africa on empowering women and girls by setting up the Language, Gender and Leadership Network, with Dr Masibo Lumala (Moi University, Kenya) and the Institute for Social Transformation, Uganda.
I am presently supervising PhD students in the areas of professional communication, workplace communication, language and gender studies, political discourse analysis, digital communication, media discourse and language and identities. I welcome PhD applications in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and pragmatics.