Welcome
​​Samantha is a Cognitive Linguist and Doctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham, specialising in figurative language and multimodal communication in advertising, social media, and mobile technology. Samantha's PhD is a Collaborative Doctoral Award funded by the Midlands4Cities Arts and Humanities Research Council (M4C AHRC) for which she works with Big Cat Advertising Agency to measure the figurative creativity and its effectiveness in social advertising campaigns. Samantha also works as a Research Associate for the EMMA project Exploring Multimodal Metaphor (and Metonymy) in Advertising.

Samantha graduated with a Master of Arts by Research in English Language and Applied Linguistics with no corrections (2019) and a Masters Scholarship, and with a first class Bachelor of Arts in English Language (2017), receiving the Research Project Prize in English Language and Linguistics.
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On this website, Samantha tracks her professional development in the academic and practitioner spheres of linguistics and marketing, posting about her ​projects, publications, attendance and presentations at conferences, workshops, and seminars, her funding, and awards. ​

Metaphor in social advertising: The case of metaphor and humour in a sexual health campaign

Samantha has been working closely with Big Cat Advertising Agency as part of her collaborative PhD funded by M4C AHRC and the EMMA project on a study examining the impact of metaphor in advertising. The study manipulated the cognitive effort required to find meaning in advertisements with metaphorical puns and measured the impact this had on people's attitude, interpretation, and behaviour. The campaign was launched in Birmingham and Solihull, UK, in June 2018 to raise awareness of sexual health.
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Watch this video to find out more:

What has Samantha been doing recently?

Timeline 2019/2020

2020
6th October: Published white paper including significant contributions: Understanding and reacting to changing to consumer behaviour for health and fitness brands
30th September: Attended workshop by Richard Shotton, Behavioural Science in Advertising
25th-29th July: Presented at the UK Cognitive Linguistics Conference
13th-14th July: Presented at the M4C Digital Festival
2nd July: Attending video-editing workshop funded by M4C
18th-21st June: Presented twice at Researching and Applying Metaphor conference
11th June: Attended King College's Open Science Research Conference
9th June: Published insight paper: Identifying the behavioural habits of gym-goers to inform an emotional 'hook' in advertising​
29th May: Attended ReproducibiliTEA Virtual Meeting: How can ECRs influence research culture and integrity?
9th March: Guest speaker at the English Language Conference for A Level English Language pupils, Worcester Racecourse
28th February: Attended Storytelling workshop about public speaking and engagement of academic research, University of Birmingham
19th-21st February: Attended the Royal Literary Fund Workshop for first year PhD students