Project team

Dr Gavin Brookes

Gavin is a Reader in Linguistics and English Language based in the School of Social Sciences. His research uses corpus linguistic, critical and multimodal approaches to discourse analysis in order to examine how language and image are used to represent health and illness. He is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Corpus Linguistics and Co-Editor of the Bloomsbury Corpus and Discourse book series.

For more information about Gavin, you can see his university page here.

Dr Emma Putland

Emma is a Senior Research Associate in the School of Social Sciences (Linguistics and English Language) at Lancaster University, UK. She is interested in the role of language and visual representations in communicating about health, dementia, ageing and the environment. This includes exploring how people with lived experience of dementia respond to popular portrayals, especially in the media. She recently developed her PhD into a book, Navigating Dementia and Society: Exploring how people affected by dementia negotiate and reshape popular discourses (Bloomsbury, 2025). Methodologically, she draws on a range of approaches, including conducting focus groups/interviews, multimodal critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. She is the Convenor for the British Association of Applied Linguists’ (BAAL) Health & Science Communication Special Interest Group.

For more information about Emma, you can see her university page here.

Chris Sanderson

Chris is a doctoral student in Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University (UK). He has already had some experience working as part of a research team as he has made various contributions to the Questioning Vaccine Discourse (Quo Vadis) project in CASS. His research interests are in corpus research methods, health discourse, critical discourse analysis, argumentation, metaphor and disinformation. Chris’ research currently aims to bring an analysis of how dementia is spoken about on social media, and investigate the ways in which these representations spread.  

For more information about Chris, you can see his university page here.

Chris Chikodzore-Paterson

Chris is an independent scholar interested in mental health, language, social inequalities, pedagogy, and technology, as well as the intersections between these areas. His Masters research at the University of Nottingham (UK) used mixed methods approaches to examine social inequalities. He has since attended to issues of generative AI representational bias, particularly in a dementia context. Chris specializes in mental health and is currently training to become a Psychotherapist.

Dr Felicity Slocombe

Felicity is a researcher and lecturer in Dementia Studies at the University of Bradford’s Department of Applied Dementia Studies (UK). Felicity is interested in exploring communication with and to people living with a dementia including how media discourses around dementia are experienced and perceived by different people.

For more information about Felicity, you can see her university page here.

Dr Kevin Harvey

Kevin is an Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics at the University of Nottingham. His research interests include the use of language and literature in social and therapeutic contexts, particularly in relation to dementia and ageing. His recent book The Literary Lifeline (Bloomsbury, 2025) examines the contribution that imaginative literature can make to improving health and quality of life, particularly in the context of reading aloud and shared reading. Written for a general audience, the book reminds us of reading’s enduring, and sometimes surprising, ability to help us through times of illness, grief, and uncertainty. It also challenges the common assumption that cognitive decline destroys personality, and shows how it is still possible for people with dementia to maintain a sense of self and personal identity.

For more information about Kevin, you can see his university page here.