Prior to moving into academia, I worked as an EFL and EAP teacher in Russia, China, the UK and Turkey, where I became increasingly interested in Corpus Linguistics, eventually moving to the University of Birmingham to complete my PhD, ‘Modality and the V wh’ pattern. I have been working at Coventry for 10 years. I teach both undergraduate and postgraduate modules on corpus linguistics and computer-assisted language learning. I also co-supervise PhD students working in the area of Corpus Linguistics, Corpus Pragmatics and Lexicography.

My main research investigates applications of and approaches to Corpus Linguistics.  

Research - current projects:

• Corpus of Health Science Research Article Introductions: this project with Lee McCallum and Aysel Şahin Kızıl is investigating the phraseology of RA introductions in the field of Health Science with the aim of producing phrases useful for early career researchers writing in this field and investigating the effects of implementing these in pedagogical practice. Further details here
• Nadsat in translation: this project investigates the use and translation of Nadsat in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. Project members include Jim Clarke, Niall Curry and Patrick Corness at Coventry University. The project site is here
• BAWE Quicklinks: I am working with Hilary Nesi and Daniel Quinn on developing hyperlinks which can help those providing feedback to students in HE to guide them to more appropriate usage - see the project website here. 
• Communicating Covid: this project is looking at the discourse of covid, for example in the Downing Street briefings. At Coventry project members are Sheena Gardner and David Beauchamp; we have recently started a collaboration with Kate Power and Peter Crosthwaite of the University of Queensland. The project website is here.