Kate Steel

Research student, School of English, Communication and Philosophy

: steelcm@cardiff.ac.uk

I’m an ESRC PhD student in the Centre for Language and Communication Research, working on legal-lay communication in domestic abuse policing. My thesis draws from body-worn video footage to examine police-victim interactions during first response call-outs to domestic incidents in England and Wales.

I graduated from Queen’s University Belfast with a BA Honours in English in 2007 and an MA with distinction in Linguistics in 2008. After a hiatus from academia, during which I worked abroad in a variety of countries and industries, I graduated from Aston University in 2017 with an MSc with distinction in Forensic Linguistics.

Research interests

Institutional discourse; language and the law (legal-lay communication; forensic linguistics); linguistic ethnography; interpersonal pragmatics; gender.

My PhD thesis combines conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics and linguistic ethnography to explore the interpersonal work done by both police officers and alleged victims during domestic abuse call-outs. The study is funded by the ESRC Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.

Teaching

I'm currently a postgraduate tutor in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy. My 2018/9 teaching modules are How Language Works (1) and Understanding Communication.

From 2010-12, I was a seminar tutor in the Department of English and Applied Linguistics at De La Salle University, Manila. My teaching modules were English for Communication, Speech Communication and English for Research.

Conferences

September 2018: 'Police 'use' of rapport in practice during domestic abuse call-out interactions'. Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice (ALAPP), Cardiff.

June 2018: 'Rapport management in police-victim interaction during domestic abuse call-outs'. Centre for Language and Communication Research (CLCR) PGR Conference 2018, Cardiff University.

June 2018: Organising committee member. CLCR PGR Conference 2018, Cardiff University.

October 2011: Steering committee member and conference host. Globalization and Localization in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (GLoCALL) 2011, De La Salle University Manila, the Philippines.