As a Research Fellow in the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics (AIFL) I will be exploring the linguistic and communicative dynamics of police interviews. I am particularly interested in how the state of mind (and associated deficits) of an interviewee with serious mental illness can affect an investigative interview. Of particular interest are (a) how the SMI might affect the evidential value of the interview, (b) how an interviewer’s knowledge of an SMI diagnosis might affect an investigative interview, and (c) whether detailed recommendations and/or training can be provided for interviewers to take into account the effects of the SMI and thereby optimise the evidential value of the interview. 

More broadly, I will be working with other members of AIFL to examine how transcriptions of police interview recordings are made and subsequently used in court as evidence, and how this process might be improved to increase the evidential value of those police interviews.

Prior to my post at Aston, I've held research fellowships on interdisciplinary mental health research projects. I have used a variety of methods, from conversation analysis to eye-tracking, to investigate a variety of phenomena, including patient/therapist interactions and metaphor comprehension in psychosis. 

2013 - University College London - PhD in Linguistics

2009 - University College London - MRes Speech, Language and Cognition

2007 - University College London - BA Linguistics (1^st class with honours)

November 2019 - Present, Aston University

Research Fellow, Institute for Forensic Linguistics

October 2016 – October 2019, Durham University

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, “Hearing the Voice”

March 2014 - October 2016, Durham University

Postdoctoral Research Associate, “Language and Mental Health”

August 2013 - March 2014, University College London

Teaching Fellow in Linguistics