Dr Kate Steel

Qualifications:

BA (Hons), MA, MSc, PhD, FHEA

Position:

Senior Lecturer in Linguistics; Programme Leader, BA (Hons) English Language and Linguistics

Department:

College of Arts, Technology and EnvironmentSchool of Arts

Email:

Kate3.Steel@uwe.ac.uk

Social media:

About me

I am a linguist specialising in the microanalysis of language and communication in complex high-stakes settings, from police first response to healthcare AI.

As a Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for English Language and Linguistics at UWE, I design and lead modules, supervise student research and oversee delivery and strategic development across the degree. My research, grounded in interactional sociolinguistics and conversation analysis, examines social interaction in institutional and corporate contexts. My ESRC-funded doctoral work broke new ground in forensic linguistics, drawing on rare access to police body-worn video footage to examine frontline officers’ communication with domestic abuse victim-survivors during first response call-outs. I continue to build on this work, contributing to police training, policy and national guidance, and am now extending the scope to examine frontline mental health crisis call-outs.

I have advised industry partners and organisations with linguistic analysis to address real-world communicative challenges. In the technology sector, I have recently collaborated in the NIHR-funded design of a healthcare AI system for underserved communities across Bristol, and I'm currently collaborating in a medical robotics project and a new initiative for understanding communication between customers and automated systems.

I welcome opportunities for research collaboration, particularly where linguistic insight can drive social impact.

Area of expertise

Interactional sociolinguistics

Conversation analysis

Forensic and legal linguistics

Ecolinguistics

Institutional and professional discourses

Human-machine communication

Interactional space

I welcome enquiries about PhD supervision in relation to any of the above areas, including projects which focus on social interaction in different contexts.

Publications

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