Room: MB738A
Phone: 0121 204 3824
Email: [email protected] 
Fax:  0121 204 3766

I am a Professor in Forensic Linguistics. I have a variety of research outputs in the field and ample casework experience, both as an expert witness and in policing contexts.

My main research focus is on individual variation in language use with reference to forensic authorship analysis. I am interested in the theoretical underpinnings of the notion of idiolect but I also work on more practical problems around linguistically enabled offender identification.

I also have an interest in interactionally and institutionally engendered communication barriers in the justice system, and in how they can be removed. In particular, I research aspects of interpreting in police interviews and the courtroom.

• MA in English Studies (Lodz)
• PhD in English Linguistics (Lodz)
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Director of the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics

Anneke Visser (Due to submit Sept. 2027) - The Application of Authorship Analysis Techniques to Speech Data as a Counter to AI Voice Cloning (Primary Supervisor)

Lisa Rogers (In submission) - Idiolect and Identity in the Personal Papers of Alice B. Sheldon (Primary Supervisor)

Julija Danu (Completed 2025) –-Person vs. Situation: Explorations of Individual Language Use Across Discourse Types and Personality Traits (Primary Supervisor)

Liubov Green (2025) - The Role and Professional Identity of the Courtroom Interpreter in the Legal System of England and Wales: An Ethnographic Study (Primary Supervisor)

Holly Anderson (2022) - Deception Detection in Earnings Conference Calls: A Discourse-Analytical Approach (Co-Supervisor)

John Blake (2021) - The Scientific Research Abstract as a Genre: A Corpus-Based Study (Primary Supervisor)

Vladislav Mackevic (2021) - Native-language Identification in English Texts Produced by L1 Speakers of Slavic Languages: Distinctiveness Within The Same Language Family (Primary Supervisor)

Annina Heini (2020) - Discursive Manifestations of the Statutory Child-Adult Divide in Police Interviews with Suspects Aged 17 and 18 (Co-Supervisor)

Yvonne Fowler (2013) - Non-English-Speaking Defendants in the Magistrates Court: A Comparative Study of Face-to-Face and Prison-Video-Link Interpreter-mediated Hearings In England (Primary Supervisor)

Eva Ng (2013) - The Atypical Bilingual Courtroom: An Exploratory Study of the Interactional Dynamics in Interpreter-Mediated Trials in Hong Kong (Primary Supervisor)