Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics, University of Warwick
I am a sociolinguist. I work primarily from variationist approaches. Most of my research has focused on describing varieties of English, and identifying changes in dialects resulting from a range of social and linguistic factors. My recent projects have included editing the Routledge Handbook of Sociophonetics; a series of "historical sociophonetic" projects to use old speech recordings to test hypotheses about sound change which were constructed to explain present-day data; and collaborations on English language and English language teaching in African contexts.
Public engagement is important to my work, too. I am a Fellow in the Warwick Institute of Engagement, and frequently share knowledge about language and linguistics in media appearances, webinars, presentations, and other events. My engagement work also includes collaborations with Cockney Cultures to celebrate non-standard Englishes traditionally associated with East London and reduce language prejudice faced by speakers of these varieties, as well as collaborations across the Eutopia Alliance of universities to foster public engagement and impact through historical sociolinguistic research.
Johannesburg in a time of darkness: Ivan Vladislavić’s new memoir reminds us of the city’s fragility
Economist Chris Richardson on an ‘ugly’ inflation result and the coming budget
Biden administration tells employers to stop shackling workers with ‘noncompete agreements’
IceCube researchers detect a rare type of energetic neutrino sent from powerful astronomical objects