My research conceptualises language-use as a form of social action and analyses empirical linguistic practices to understand their place in wider societal issues and perspectives, such as poverty and neoliberalism, power, and social justice.

My research interests therefore span a range of professional and institutional contexts, including call centres, legal processes and policies, and healthcare frameworks, as well as public-facing discourse. I am particularly interested in professional-lay contexts, such as debt collection interactions, especially where lay-participants may be classed as vulnerable, powerless, or disadvantaged, or who may be positioned as such by the language use of others.

I also research public representations of food and fuel poverty and their intersections.

I work with both spoken and written discourse, employing theories and analytical tools from socio-pragmatics, move analysis, narrative analysis, grounded theory, and corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis. 

I am the course unit convenor for Discourse as Social Practice (LELA32062 & LELA62062). I also teach on Stylistics of English LELA21511. I supervise BA and MA dissertations relating to language and society, including spoken interactions in institutional contexts and corpus-assisted discourse analysis.