The Department of Languages, Information and Communications is made up of a vibrant community of researchers working across a range of disciplines. These include: Linguistics, Communications, Information Science and Informatics, Cultural Studies, Information Behaviour, Languages, Media Studies, and Information Architecture and Design.
Particular research strengths within these areas include:
- Sociolinguistics, applied pragmatics, forensic linguistics, applied linguistics, corpus linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, intercultural communication, stylistics.
- Digital interactions in digital contexts including Search Engines, Web Technologies, Social Media, Virtual Realities, XR, and with for example Big Data, Web Information and the Internet of Things.
- Digital transformations in the research areas of Information and Digital Literacies, Information Discernment, Information Behaviour, Information Retrieval, User Perceptions, User Experience and the Posthuman Lens.
- Gender and race studies, youth culture.
- (Alternative) political communication, computational journalism, digital creativity, importance of media in user engagement, interactive media, media law, public affairs, sports journalism.
- French, Hispanic, interpreting and translation.
- TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), technology in teaching.
- Digital anthropology. ethnography, film/media pedagogy, languages, film studies and media, sociology of digital technology.
Research Centres and Groups
Our staff hold key roles in specialist research centres within the department, across the faculty and wider university, and extarnally. These include:
Current and recent projects
- Dr Rob Drumond and Dr Erin Carrie's Manchester Voices - an AHRC-funded project exploring the accents, dialects and identities of perople in Greater Manchester.
- Dr Stella Bullo's The Language of Endometriosis - an ongoing project analysing the language that women with endometriosis use to talk both about their experiences of living with the condition and their experiences of trying to access diagnostic treatment.
- Dr Samuel Larner's involvement in the ESRC-funded MCYS project exploring the impact of Covid on the youth justice system.
- Professor Dawn Archer's Encyclopedia of Shakespeare's Language - an AHRC-funded project with Lancaster University.
- Dr Khawla Badwan's British Council funded consultancy project looking at issues around language policy and planning in Tunisia.
- Dr Geoff Walton's e-learning portal project funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) Innovation Voucher, alongside an industry partner, Jeff Gosling Hand Controls.
- Professor Dawn Archer's Linguistic Toolkit for Crisis Negotiators. A collaborative project with the National Negotiation Group (UK Police), exploring (1) a language-focused how to of crisis negotiation and (2) related training enhancements.
- Dr Carmen Herrero and Dr Isabelle Vanderschelden's involvement in a major UK-wide research programme: “Cross-Language Dynamics – Reshaping Community” (OWRI) a four-year (2016-2020) programme, one of four within the Open World Research Initiative of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (OWRI). The programme was led by researchers at the University of Manchester and involved 12 UK institutions.
- Dr Erin Carrie and Dr Rob Drummond's Accentism project - exploring language-based prejudice, discrimination and negative stereotyping.
For more information, please contact Dr Rob Drummond, Research and Knowledge Exchange lead for the department.
See our staff profiles
