Dr Ursula Kania BA, MA, Dr. phil., FHEA

Personal Statement

I'm a linguist with expertise in corpus linguistics, discourse analysis and approaches combining the two (primarily corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis).
My PhD (2013) was in the area of First Language Acquisition, and I'm still interested in language acquisition (both first and second), especially bi/multilingualism, and issues around language and identity.

My most recent research mainly investigates representation, discrimination, and power, with a particular focus on LGBTQIA+/gender issues, minorities/marginalised groups, and the relationship between food and identity. For example, in 2022 I published a book chapter examining representations of female singleness in American cookbooks for one.

Recent/ongoing research projects:

- Sinophobia in the age of COVID-19 (collaboration with Lucienne Loh, Victorina González-Díaz and Ross Forman, since 2020): the linguistic side of the project provides a critical analysis of UK press coverage, focusing on representations of Chinese (food) culture pre-Covid (1900-2019) as well as in the early stages of the pandemic (2020).

- Multilingualism, Migration and Marginalized Voices on Social Media (collaboration with Sofia Lampropoulou, Annarita Magliacane, and Paige Johnson, since 2023): this project aims to investigate how and what kinds of marginalized voices are constructed on social media (specifically Reddit) in relation to discussions about (second) language learning, bilingualism, and multilingualism from a raciolinguistic ideological perspective.

- 'Like diabetes on a plate' - discourses about diabetes in online reader comments (collaboration with Antonia Phillips-Beeching, as part of the HSS research internship scheme, since 2023): this is a case study which examines online reader comments posted in response to coverage of Great British Bake-Off presenter Paul Hollywood's comments that a contestant's bake looked like 'diabetes on a plate'. Apart from providing an analysis of key themes and discourses in the dataset, the project offers insights into the genre and dynamics of 'online reader comments' and addresses methodological issues as well (e.g., use of appropriate reference corpora for keyword analysis).

I am available for talks, workshops, and media appearances on any of these topics and open to be approached by potential collaborators for follow-up projects.

I have successfully supervised MRes as well as PhD students and welcome enquiries about topics that fall within any of my areas of interest/expertise.

My student support hours in semester 1 (2023/24) are on Tuesday 11-12 and by arrangement (either f2f or online).