Dr Anthea Irwin

Overview

Anthea joined the School of Communication in 2013 from Glasgow Caledonian University. She holds a first class honours degree in English Studies from the University of Stirling, a MA with distinction in Linguistics from Durham University, and a PhD from the University of Surrey Roehampton. She is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Anthea has applied her main research interest of power and identity in discourse to a range of fields, publishing journal articles and book chapters on adolescent interaction; media constructions of young people, asylum seekers, poverty, minority languages, and political events; and gender and leadership in UK politics.  

Her current research explores the post-conflict identities of adult learners of Irish in Northern Ireland. Anthea has reviewed for a range of publishers. She is a member of the organising committee for the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) Conference 2017 and was a joint recipient of the 2015 Belfast Ambassador of the Year award in that role.  

Anthea teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the School, in the areas of Communication Studies, Language and Media Analysis, Writing for the Communication Industries, and Research Methods, and she acts as a PhD supervisor. She has held external examining posts at Goldsmith’s and Forth Valley College.

Anthea is keen to make her research relevant to students and communities. She has made a range of contributions to student-facing books in the areas of Sociolinguistics and Language and Media, and she is a regular contributor to the ESRC Festival of Social Science.