Staff Research Interests

Albert Sloman Library at nightThe following list provides a guide for applicants wishing to take an MA, MPhil by research, MRes, New Route PhD or PhD by supervised research. Each staff member's profile contains a detailed outline of the topics that they are willing to supervise at MPhil and PhD level. The list, therefore, should serve as a useful focus when drafting your research proposal.

For other information go to the main research page and the main staff list. See also: MA supervision arrangements

Staff Research Interests - Page One

Enam Al-Wer
Doug Arnold
Robert Borsley
Vineeta Chand
Rebecca Clift

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Enam Al-Wer, BA Jordan, Dip Munich, MLing Manchester, PhD Essex

Topics for MA/MPhil/PhD supervision:

  • Anything in the area of variation and change
  • Dialect/language contact
  • Gender differentiation in language
  • Language maintenance/shift
  • Multilingualism and code-switching

>> Supervision practice

Doug Arnold, MA Cambridge, MA Essex, PhD Essex

Topics for MA/MPhil/PhD supervision:

I am happy to supervise students in any of the areas where I teaching or research interests: generally syntax and semantics, especially in constraint based frameworks such as Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar and Lexical Functional Grammar; I am especially interested in the grammar of English.

>> Supervision practice

Robert Borsley,  BA Bangor, PhD Edinburgh

Topics for MA/MPhil/PhD supervision:

I welcome Ph.D. students in any of the areas in which I have research or teaching interests. This means especially various areas of syntax, but also Relevance Theory and Philosophy of Linguistics. Within syntax I am particularly interested in work within Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar or Principles and Parameters theory, and among the areas of syntax that are of particular interest to me are negation, coordination, relative clauses and infinitival constructions. I am particularly interested in the Celtic and Slavonic languages, but I am happy to supervise dissertations on any language.

>> Supervision practice

Vineeta Chand, BA MA PhD, California

Topics for MA/MPhil/PhD supervision:

  • language variation and change
  • language/dialect/literacy shift, acquisition and/or maintenance
  • language politics (e.g., language policy, sociolinguistics of globalization, linguistic ideologies)
  • language and identity
  • medical/clinical sociolinguistics

 Ideally using one of the following (or multiple) methodological approaches

  • variationist sociolinguistics
  • acoustic analysis
  • corpus linguistics
  • discourse analysis
  • other quantitative approaches

>> Supervision practice

Rebecca Clift, BA Durham, MPhil/PhD Cambridge

Topics for MA/MPhil/PhD supervision:

  • Aspects of conversational structure (in any language)
  • The construction of identity through membership categories and the grammaticalisation of social relations.
  • Talk in institutional contexts

Possible approaches: Analysis of...

  • A specific structure (e.g. repair, presequencing, footing)
  • Specified features (particles, tokens, TCUs)
  • Particular issues (conflict in defined settings, neutrality, power relationships)
  • Structure/function of certain activities (accusations, complaints, troubles-telling)

>> Supervision practice

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Last modified on 11 May 2012.