The FORGE is delighted to announce our third and final external guest speaker: Prof Tim Grant (Aston). Details of his talk are below:

TITLE
Taking language analysis to Court – How linguistic investigative advice, language evidence, and expert opinion are used in the UK justice system

NOTES
This will be of especial interest to those looking to go into a career in forensic linguistics.

ABSTRACT
In this talk Tim Grant will examine the different roles through which language analysis can be used to improve the delivery of justice in the Courts. Through discussion of a series of cases in which he has been involved he will argue that forensic linguists, acting both as researchers and practitioners, need to focus on a broad variety of use cases and understand better how their analysis can be useful in the criminal and civil justice systems. He will examine the legal context in through which experts (including linguists) give evidence in Court and he will argue that forensic linguistic evidence needs to be methodological rigorous and admissible but also it must include clear and convincing explanation to provide the tryers of fact with a rationale basis for making their decisions.

BIO
Professor Tim Grant is the Director of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University. Tim is on the Ethics and Professional Practice Committee of the International Association of Forensic Linguists and is a member of the Scientific Committee for the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (iIIRG). Tim has extensive experience of providing linguistic evidence in a variety of cases including successful investigations into sexual assault, stalking, murder, and terrorism. Tim is particularly interested in forensic authorship analysis focusing on short messages such as text messages and Twitter posts, and he is also interested in how linguists can advise and train police officers to conduct better interviews. Tim’s work has appeared in featured newspaper articles and on BBC radio programmes. Furthermore, after providing a profile of a writer of roughly 60 racially and sexually abusive letters, Tim appeared as part of a media appeal on the BBC Crimewatch programme. This media appeal was successful in finding the offender, who matched the profile proposed by Tim.

TIME & PLACE
1300-1400, Wed 22^nd Mar, Management School Lecture Theatre 6