On 1st November 2018, the collaborative project between the University of Birmingham and Big Cat Marketing Communications Agency was awarded the Birmingham Post's Partnership of the Year Award. ​The project worked with non-profit organisations Solihull Community Housing Association and the Aspire charity (research, rehabilitation, and reintegration for people with spinal-cord injury) as part of their Aspire Channel Swim campaign. 

During my Master’s studies in English Language at the University of Birmingham, I discovered the UoB Sign Language Society; a society that organised 65 hours of tutored lessons in level 1 British Sign Language (BSL) over a course of night classes for 6 months. Sign Language and gesture has become a keen field of research for academic linguists. At the taster session, the sign language linguist Dr Adam Schembri from my department (English Language and Applied Linguistics) introduced the concept of deaf 

On 6th February 2018, I started working with Professor Jeannette Littlemore and Dr Paula Perez-Sobrino on a collaborative project with a local Birmingham advertising agency, Big Cat Agency. The project aims to investigate how figurative messaging can impact people's responses to advertising campaigns through the 

On Friday 6th April 2018, I attended and presented at the Birmingham English Language Postgraduate (BELP) conference. The conference theme was 20 Years in English Language and Linguistics: Critical Reflections and Future Directions with plenary speakers Professor Susan Hunston OBE and Professor Alice Deignan. In my presentation, Surf on 4-inch stilettos": Multimodal Metaphor and Metonymy in Mobile Phone Advertising, I talked about the 

Read the presentation abstract here: ​

​The Lydney Training Band is hosting a fundraising charity concert on Saturday 21st April 2018, 6.30-9pm, at the Lydney Town Hall. The concert will showcase the Lydney Training Band and Lydney Starter Band with guest euphonium soloist Thomas Dunne MMus BMus (Hons).
 
Concert Organiser, Samantha Ford, is solo horn and lifetime member of the Lydney Town Band. She is currently studying a Master's in English Language at the University of Birmingham and has been invited to present at her first international conference in Hong Kong about her postgraduate research for 'Researching and Applying Metaphor' (RaAM). The concert will help raise money for her trip to Hong Kong and also contribute to the CLiC Sargent charity Cancer and Leukaemia in Children to help improve young lives with cancer.

On Wednesday 4th October I was introduced to the eye-tracking software and equipment in the English Language and Applied Linguistics (ELAL) Lab. The eye-tracking technology allows researchers to trace the pathways of a participant's eye movements while observing visual stimuli.  This new role with the University of Birmingham's (UoB) ELAL department provides me, as a researcher, an opportunity to work with this technical software and equipment, while supporting English Language (BA) students with their studies. ​

The full-day workshop was managed by Professor Jeannette Littlemore and Dr Paula Perez-Sobrino as part of their Marie Curie project, Exploring Multimodal Metaphor in Advertising,  and brought together academics and business people interested in language in advertising.  Being particularly fascinated by this area of research, I signed up to attend the workshop.  

​There was a host of insight into this applied area of linguistics that was especially intriguing; from learning about the impact of logo design to watching psychophysiological technology that tracked skin (sweat) responses of participants to audio-visual viral advertising!