I have recently been awarded a Leverhulme Research Project Grant – ‘Searching for relevance: pragmatics and affective science’. The project begins in September 2025. It will generate a monograph, an edited volume with Cambridge University Press and a video designed for a popular audience. You can find a summary of the project here and there will soon be a project website too.
I am editing the Cambridge Companion to Paul Grice (the finest philosopher of language bar none) with my colleague from the University of Oslo, Dr Nicholas Allott.
I have contributed a chapter to the above volume entitled ‘From Grice to relevance theory’ which attempts to trace the personal and intellectual histories between Grice’s innovative ideas and the work of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson.
I am contributing a chapter on ‘Affectivist Pragmatics’ to a forthcoming OUP volume on Affectivism edited by colleagues from the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences, Prof. David Sander and Dr Daniel Dukes, and Dr Disa Sauter of the University of Amsterdam. This follows the paper with Prof. Sander, Dr Dukes and others entitled ‘The rise of affectivism’ which was published in Nature: Human Behaviour.
Prof. Sander, Dr Dukes, Dr Steve Oswald, Dr Yoann Stussi, Dr Constant Bonard and I have had a proposal accepted by Behavioral and Brain Sciences to write a paper which will build further bridges between affective science and relevance theory.
I have co-authored with Egyptian researcher Dr Omayma Rezk a chapter entitled ‘Relevance theory and emotion’ for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Relevance Theory. Dr Rezk is currently applying for a Fulbright Scholarship to work in the US.
I am writing two chapters with Dr Mengyang Qiu. One on relevance theory, literature and emotion, another on relevance theory and appraisals.
I am collaborating with Dr Caroline Jagoe of Trinity College, Dublin as an expert member on the advisory panel in her IRC Laureate Award ‘Co-Construct’, a project which addresses communication access for people with communicative disabilities. I visited Dublin in September 2024 to deliver a talk and with Dr Jagoe and her colleagues, Dr Mirela Conica and Maria Zakaria, we have written a paper entitled ‘Investigating communication support strategies as ‘Micro-interventions’: A conceptual-methodological framework applying realist evaluation and relevance theory’ which is currently under review.
I organised a roundtable event with Dr Jagoe entitled ‘Relevance-by-the-Sea‘ at Brighton in 2019. A special issue of Journal of Pragmatics, based on talks from the Brighton event, has now been published.
I recently co-edited an issue of Frontiers in Psychology entitled ‘Relevance in Mind’ with colleagues from Dublin, Fribourg (Switzerland) and Kingston (UK). The OA editorial is available here.
I am a proud supporter of Dr Kate Scott and Dr Ryoko Sasamoto‘s Relevance Researchers Network and co-lead a Special Interest Group on Relevance and Emotion there with Dr Chara Vlachaki. The network is also the new home of our weekly UoB Reading for Relevance reading group (formerly ReadLing). The focus is pragmatics and relevance theory, but we read a wide range of interdisciplinary papers. Please contact Joe Reynolds for details.