Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics

The Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics is the first of its type in the world. It combines leading-edge research and investigative forensic practice with postgraduate teaching and professional courses.

Research at the Institute involves all aspects of forensic linguistics from how the police and the courts can best work with interpreters to the development and refinement of methods for identifying the writer of disputed forensic texts. Members have published widely and lectured about their research in some 30 countries. Their high-quality research ensures that both postgraduate and professional courses and their investigative work have a solid academic foundation.

FLAIR - Forensic Linguistics Advice, Investigation & Research is the consultancy arm of the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics. Bringing together experienced practitioners with experience of hundreds of cases, FLAIR offers high-quality expertise, from analysis and report writing, to the delivery of expert opinions in court. Recent casework has included analyses of mobile telephone text messages, forged suicide notes and terrorist conspiracy documents. FLAIR applies quality assurance procedures that are unavailable to lone practitioners and offers a clearing house service to investigators and potential clients looking for an expert.

The Institute offers high quality training in all aspects of forensic linguistics to a variety of professional groups including police officers, lawyers and judges. The International Summer School in Forensic Linguistic Analysis is a week-long introduction to forensic linguistics for professionals and academics and the Institute also offers tightly focussed one-day courses in Interviewing with an Interpreter, Linguistic Issues in the Courtroom, and Forensic Textual Analysis.

The MSc in Forensic Linguistics is as a distance-learning, credit-accumulation, programme, which draws on Aston University's substantial expertise developed over 25 years in delivery of distance courses. Students based anywhere in the world can study and accumulate credits from individual modules and/or short courses to gain the postgraduate qualification that suits them. Short courses such as the above-mentioned International Summer School can be taken as credit-bearing modules and so contribute towards a Postgraduate qualification.