Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics

The Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics is the leading hub for forensic linguistics worldwide. Set up as the Centre for Forensic Linguistics in 2008 by Malcolm Coulthard, it was expanded into a research institute with investment from Research England in 2019.

We are a thriving and lively community of over thirty members, from PhD students to professors, and our research is innovative, applied, interdisciplinary and impactful. In addition to conducting cutting-edge research, our members teach on the Aston MA in Forensic Linguistics, a programme that consistently enables graduates to secure careers in policing, intelligence analysis and related fields. We also run CPD courses and provide investigative assistance and expert evidence in criminal and civil cases.

Our diverse efforts are united by a common goal - improving the delivery of justice through the analysis of language.

Our People

Management Team

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​​​​Dr Krzysztof Kredens
Director of Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics

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Dr Nicci MacLeod
Deputy Director of Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics

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Dr Stefanie Kreibich
Operations Manager for Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics

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Emma Wheeley
Research Projects and Strategy Manager

 

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Institute Staff

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Dr Sarah Atkins 
Lecturer in English
Email: s.atkins@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Andrea Mojedano Batel
Research Fellow in Forensic Linguistics
Email: a.mojedanobatel@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Amy Booth
Researcher in Forensic Linguistics
Email a.booth@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Lucia Busso 
Research Fellow in Forensic Linguistics 
Email: l.busso@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Emily Chiang 
Research Fellow in Forensic Linguistics
Email: e.chiang2@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Felicity Deamer
Senior Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics
Email: f.deamer@aston.ac.uk

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Prof Tim Grant
Professor of Forensic Linguistics
Email: t.d.grant@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Kate Haworth
Interaction in Legal Contexts
Email: k.haworth@aston.ac.uk 

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Dr Madison Hunter
Research Associate in Forensic Linguistics
Email: m.hunter5@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Fiona Kelcher
Teaching Fellow 
Email: kelcherf@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Krzysztof Kredens
Director of the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics
Email: k.j.kredens@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Stefanie Kreibich 
Operations Manager 
Email: s.kreibich@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Nicci MacLeod
Deputy Director of the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics
Email: n.macleod5@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Geoffrey Stewart Morrison
Director of the Forensic Speech Science Laboratory
Email: g.s.morrison@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Ralph Morton
Research Fellow in Forensic Linguistics
Email: r.morton2@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Tahmineh Tayebi
Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics
Email: t.tayebi@aston.ac.uk

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Dr Philip Weber 
Lecturer in Forensic Data Science
Email: p.weber1@aston.ac.uk

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Emma Wheeley
Research Projects and Strategy Manager

 

Honorary and Adjunct Members

Mitchell Abrams Visiting AIFL Researcher Email: 190205803@aston.ac.uk FTA	Dr Isabel Picornell Director, QED Forensic Linguistics Ltd Email: isabel@qedforensics.com FTA, SILC
Prof Lauren Devine Professor of Linguistics and Law Lancaster University	Dr Emma Richardson Lecturer in Language and Social Interaction Loughborough University
Dr Ewald Enzinger Senior Research Engineer Eduworks Corporation FSSL	Dr Claudia Rosas Instituto de Lingüística y Literatura, Universidad Austral de Chile FSSL
Dr Leigh Harrington Lecturer in English Language, Linguistics and English Language University of Manchester	Dr Juliette Scott Legal Translation Practitioner, Researcher & Consultant Email: juliette.scott@tiscali.co.uk
Dr Annina Heini Research Fellow in Forensic Linguistics University of Melbourne Email: a.heini14@aston.ac.uk	John O'Shea  Legal Translation Practitioner Email: info@jurtrans.com
Nadia Makouar Professor (Associate) Paul Valéry University, Montpellier	James Tompkinson Lecturer in Sociolinguistics York University
Prof Yaron Matras Honorary Professor, Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, School of Social Sciences Email:y.matras@aston.ac.uk Personal website: yaronmatras.org FTA	Prof Cuiling Zhang School of Criminal Investigation, Southwest University of Political Science and Law FSSL
Dr Ria Perkins Email: r.perkins@aston.ac.uk FTA

 

PhD Research Students

Neus Alberich: Discursive constructions of consent in the manosphere	Noorin Iqbal: A linguistic analysis of religious hate speech by Indians aganist Islam and Muslims of India on Instagram
Amy Brown: The influence of psychopathic traits and personality disorders on stalker communication	Lauren Morgan: BSL-interpreted police investigative interviews
Lily Calloway: The language of encouragement in pro-ana and assisted suicide	Eden Palmer: The language of transphobia on a British parenting forum
Melanie Clinton: Language in expert reports submitted to the Family Court	Karolina Placzynta: Hate speech in moderated social media context: patterns, parallels, and intersections
Julija Dana: Personality type and idiolectal style	Jordan Robertson: The perception of silence in police-suspect interviews
Jenna Elliott: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of the manifestos of mass shooters in the USA	Anneke Visser: The application of Authorship Analysis techniques on speech data as a counter to AI-generated voice cloning in speaker comparison

 

Members of the AIFL Advisory Board

Janet Ainsworth John D. Eshelman Professor of Law Emerita, Seattle University Email: jan@seattleu.edu Adviser for CLL	Yaron Matras Honorary Professor, Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics, School of Social Sciences Email: y.matras@aston.ac.uk Personal website: yaronmatras.org Adviser to AIFL
Malcolm Coulthard Professor Emeritus, Birmingham University Chair of the AIFL Advisory Board	Peter Patrick Professor Emeritus, Essex University Email: patrickp@essex.ac.uk Adviser for FTA
Chris Heffer Reader, Cardiff University Email: HefferC2@cardiff.ac.uk Adviser for SILC	Professor Paul Taylor Chief Scientific Advisor to Policing
Deborah Leary, OBE CEO and founder of Forensic Pathways Adviser to AIFL

 

We are organised into the following research clusters

LiDiLS

Title: Linguistic Disadvantage in Legal Settings (LiDiLS)
Coordinator: Dr Felicity Deamer

The central aim is to use linguistic methods to conduct analysis of the language used in a variety of legal settings to explore issues around vulnerability and disadvantage within the legal system. We aim to better understand how vulnerability and disadvantage can be caused, maintained, and shaped by the needs and procedures of the legal system. An enhanced understanding of these issues will facilitate better provision for vulnerable and disadvantaged individuals in myriad legal settings.

Ethical uncertainties and inconsistencies in diminished responsibility rulings

Dr Felicity Deamer Examining ways in which uncertainties in the conceptual underpinnings of diminished responsibility are reflected in ethical uncertainties and inconsistencies in psychiatric evidence. Deamer and Wilkinson. (forthcoming). Ethical uncertainties and inconsistencies in diminished responsibility rulings: a case for psychiatric fictionalism

SILC

Title: Spoken Interaction in Legal Contexts (SILC)
Coordinator: Dr Nicci MacLeod

The primary research focus is on investigative interviews in policing and other contexts (such as internal or civil investigations), but our remit encompasses other contexts where spoken interaction is central, such as courtroom interaction, emergency calls, and first response encounters. A key tenet of our approach is to work closely with practitioners and external organisations, in order to produce genuinely useful research informed by, and grounded in, professional practice.

For the Record - Dr Kate Haworth and Dr Felicity Deamer

A study applying linguistics to improve evidential consistency in police investigative interview records. Haworth et al. (2023). For the Record: applying linguistics to improve evidential consistency in police investigative interview records. Frontiers in Communication, Vol. 8 - 2023. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2023.1178516

Tompkinson et al. (2023). Perceptual instability in police interview records: Examining the effect of pauses and modality on people’s perceptions of an interviewee. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 30(1), 22–51. https://doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.24565

Richardson et al. (2023). Understanding the role of transcription in evidential consistency of police interview records in England and Wales. Language in Society. D

eamer et al. (2022). For the Record: Exploring variability in interpretations of police investigative interviews. Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito. 9, 1, p. 25-46. https://doi.org/10.21747/21833745/lanlaw/9_1a2

Crimes in Action - Dr Sarah Atkins and Dr Felicity Deamer

A study of police emergency calls in the UK addresses the interactional work conducted when dealing with reports of kidnap. Atkins et al. (2024). Communicating and categorising kidnap incidents in UK police emergency calls. Policing and Society. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2024.2386282

Discursive Effects of a 'Pioneering Approach': Police interviews with rape victims in the context of Operation Bluestone Soteria - Dr Nicci MacLeod (BA/Leverhulme Small Grant 2023-2024)

This project scrutinised a set of investigative interviews carried out with victims of rape prior to the rolling out of changes enacted by the large-scale research programme Operation Soteria. It has identified a number of key areas of interviewing practice where recommendations from the programme might be put to use. This project served as a pilot for further research for which funding is currently being sought.

HALO

Title: Harmful and Abusive Language Online (HALO)
Coordinator: Dr Tahmineh Tayebi

Brings together work in the institute that focuses on the role of language in the composition and dissemination of hateful and dangerous ideologies in online spaces. From white supremacy to child sexual abuse, from transphobia to the so-called 'manosphere', and from misogyny to pro-suicide fora, discourse is at the heart of a range of dangerous online practices, and our work seeks to unpack these processes to shed light on how we might improve the safety of marginalised and/or vulnerable groups in the online sphere.

Online Offensive Language - Dr Tahmineh Tayebi (monograph in press)

In this project, we conduct a multi-layered, corpus-assisted analysis of offensive language across various social media platforms, focusing on the lexical, discursive, and pragmatic features.

Appraisal for Intelligence Analysis (AIA) - Dr Nicci MacLeod and Dr Madison Hunter (and formerly Professor Tim Grant (Externally Funded)

Testing the utility of Appraisal Theory for investigating and categorising harmful online discourse, with a view to semi-automating the process to assist with intelligence gathering.

Linguistically Enabled Analytic Dark Search-Engine (LEADS-Engine) - Dr Emily Chiang and Dr Krzystof Kredens (UKRI Innovate UK grant)

A projects incorporating corpus linguistics tools into a search engine to assist commercial entities (e.g. Banks) in monitoring fraudulent activity on the dark web.

Hierarchies of Power - Dr Felicity Deamer (and formerly Professor Tim Grant) (Externally funded)

To provide understanding and tools for the analysis of hierarchies of power across large datasets of anonymous online criminal interactions. Newsome-Chandler, H. & Grant, T. (2023) Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito. 10, 1, 21 p.

FTA

Title: Forensic Text Analysis (FTA)
Coordinator: Dr Krzysztof Kredens

Researches individual variation in language use to inform the theory and practice of forensic authorship analysis. We are interested in linguistically-enabled offender identification, the identification of the native dialect or language of non-native speakers of English producing texts in English online, and the correlations between language use and age, and language use and personality.

100 Idiolects - Dr Krzysztof Kredens

A resource used to facilitate research on individual variation across discourse types.

Idiolectal stability in Spanish - Dr Krzysztof Kredens and Dr Andrea Celeste Mojedano Batel

A project investigating patterns of individual linguistic stability across discourse types using Spanish-language data.

Publications

Events

Teaching

Members of the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics deliver our world leading MA Forensic Linguistics (with a distance learning option if your preference is to study remotely). Our course is designed to help you explore cutting-edge research and practical applications.

With a £6M UK government grant, we've expanded our capabilities to ensure you receive the very best expertise. Guided by experienced academics, you will delve into numerous topics, from identifying authors to addressing online abuse.

You will engage in real case work, collaborate on research projects and attend seminars to boost your skills. Whether you're looking for a career in policing, intelligence, cybersecurity or academia, our programme equips you with the tools to make a real difference.

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Contact Programme Director, Dr Felicity Deamer for more details.

Continuous Professional Development

Laboratory and databank