As a Research Fellow in Aston’s Institute for Forensic Linguistics (AIFL) I’m a member of the centre for Spoken Interaction in Legal Contexts (SILC), where we are exploring how police investigative interviews get repurposed and used as evidence in court. 

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. 

A separate but equally important aspect of my current research is centred around violence and the use of restraint on mental health wards. I am focused on whether there are particular communicative and interactional patterns (i.e. speech acts and/or turn-taking dynamics) that precede the escalation of violent episodes in patients in acute mental health settings, and whether there are particular types of talk or exchange that result in a positive de-escalation of these violent incidents that could reduce the use of restraint on wards. 

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