Over the years I have enjoyed working with a number of PhD students on a range of issues: embodiment and metaphor ( Dr Alex Golding ); the communication of mathematics ( Dr Kate McCallum’s PhD had a creative practice component ); iconicity and sign language ( Dr Mary Edward is now a postdoc at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada ); the role of prosody in the development of pragmatic competence among L2 learners ( Dr Pauline Madella ); using relevance theory to adopting a ‘difference-not-deficit’ approach to language-use among autistic people ( Dr Gemma Williams has just published this book ); lexical pragmatics and ‘Netspeak’ among Chinese internet users ( Dr Chengying Gao, currently based at Wenzhou University, China, and working on a monograph ); a dual-route processing model of metaphor comprehension ( Dr Mengyang Qiu is currently teaching at Guangxi Medical University in China).
Dr Chara Vlachaki recently defended her thesis on relevance, aesthetics and ineffability. (She is currently working on a monograph).
I am currently supervising students on projects related to: cognitive science and sound symbolism ( Mat Smith ); food design and sustainability ( Kristin Bullivant ); multilingualism and creativity ( Natasha Kennedy ); the relationship between language and music ( Joe Reynolds – Joe began in October 2024 and is a proud recipient of a Techne AHRC Scholarship ).
Anna Viatova has also recently won a Techne scholarship to work on bridging the gap between affective and linguistic processing in foreign language learners. She joins us officially in October 2025. Prof. Didier Maillat from Université de Fribourg, CH, is also on Anna’s supervisory team.
All of these reflect the interest I have in territories beyond those pragmaticists traditionally seek to explore.
Please contact me me if you feel you have a PhD proposal which you think I might be interested in. (And please call me ‘Tim’: it’s my name.)