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Staff Profile

Dr Adam Brandt

Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics

Background

Background

I was appointed as Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University in June 2013, having previously obtained my PhD (2011), an MA in Cross-Cultural Communication & Applied Linguistics (2006) and an MA in Applied Linguistics Research (2007) in the same department.

Between studying and working at Newcastle University, I spent two years as a JSPS Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Kansai University (Osaka, Japan). I have also spent time in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa (as part of my PhD, in 2009) and the Graduate School of Language and Culture at Osaka University (for a research sabbatical, in 2017).

In August 2020, I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics (equivalent to Associate Professor).

Roles and responsibilities

  • Faculty representative on the Taught Programmes Sub-Committee (reporting to University Education Committee)

Previous roles I have held include:

  • Head of the Applied Linguistics & Communication subject area (Sept 2018 - Jan 2023)
  • Member of School Executive Board (Sept 2018 - Jan 2023)
  • Member of School Research Committee (Sept 2018 - Jan 2023)
  • Member of School Teaching & Learning Committee (Sept 2018 - Jan 2023)
  • Degree Programme Director for our suite of MA Cross-Cultural Communication programmes (2013-2021)
  • Chair of Board of Studies
  • Chair of Board of Examiners
Research

Areas of research expertise

  • Social interaction
  • Intercultural Communication
  • International workplaces
  • Higher Education
  • Technologies for communication

Google Scholar

Scopus

ORCID

Research Interests

I am an applied linguist interested in social interaction. I analyse recordings of real-life communication, using the research methods of Conversation Analysis (CA) and Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA). I am a member of Multimodal Analysis Research Group (MARG), a research forum for staff and students interested in using these methods for the analysis of human social interaction.

At present, my main areas of research interest are:

(1) technologized social interaction – contexts in which members are interacting through, or with, technologies. An example of the former would be communication via video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom, an example of the latter would be engagements with conversational AI technologies such as voice assistants. In early 2023, I was awarded a British Academy Innovation Fellowship to explore such communication in autonomous clinical telephone consultations.

(2) Asymmetrical settings, in which members have differing sets of communicative repertoires. This includes second language interaction, multilingual workplaces and educational settings. It also includes interactions involving people living with conditions which impact upon communication, such as dementia.

Recent Research Funding

Encoding empathy: Solving the healthcare workforce crisis through the safe deployment of an AI-driven voice-based clinical conversational assistant for long term monitoring, PI, UKRI Innovate UK Biomedical Catalyst (£124,321), June 2024 - Dec 2025

JSPS Bridge Fellowship 2023-24

Exploring with Dora: identifying principles of effective conversational AI through an autonomous telemedicine service, PI, British Academy Innovation Fellowship (£49,750), Feb 2023 - Aug 2023

Interaction, Dementia, and Engagement in the Arts for Lifelong Learning (IDEAL), Co-I, UKRI Healthy Ageing Catalysts Award (£62,000), Oct 2020 - Oct 2021

Interaction, Dementia, and Engagement in the Arts (IDEA), Co-I, British Academy Small Research Grant (£7,500), Sept 2017 - Sept 2019

Postgraduate Supervision 

I would be delighted to hear from potential PhD students with an interest in using interaction analysis methods to study any of the above topics. At present, I am supervising three postgraduate research students: Kleopatra Sideridou (as first supervisor), and Ashleigh Regan and Wenwen Zhang (as second supervisor).

I have also supervised 16 successful PhD projects to date:

Dr Badryah Almesfer

Dr Ahmad Al Mulla

Dr Yiyin Wang

Dr Hanain Brohi (as first supervisor, with Peter Sercombe). "'It's scary how many people believe what Trump believes': How a Muslim women's Sisters' Circle interactionally navigate socio-political realities", January 2021.

Dr Nimet Copur (as first supervisor, with Prof Steve Walsh). "The multimodal work of creating a humorous frame in English as a foreign language classes", December 2020.

Dr Kazuki Hata (as second supervisor, with Prof Steve Walsh) “Projectability, contextuality and complexity of trailoff: A Conversation Analysis of ‘but’ at turn-final placement”, November 2018.

Dr Somporn Maneechote (as second supervisor, with Alan Firth) "Negative assessments of referents in co-participants' cultural groups and responses in intercultural interaction", July 2018.

Dr Khadija El-Wakai (as second supervisor, with Prof Steve Walsh) "Topic Management: The 'About What-ness' of Interaction in Student University Meetings", June 2018.

Dr Yoonjoo Cho (as first supervisor, with Peter Sercombe) "The interviewers' self-disclosure in L2 research interviews: A Conversation Analytic study on empathic reformulation and discursive identity work embedded in the interviewer's self-revealing talk", April 2018.

Dr Ufuk Girgin (as first supervisor, with Prof Steve Walsh) "Reconsidering the uses of a minimal ‘non-lexical’ response token through ‘embodiment’: A second language teacher’s deployment of ‘mm hm’ as a third-turn receipt", December 2017.

Dr Yun Pan (as first supervisor, with Chris Leyland), "Framing University Small Group Talk: Knowledge Construction Through Lexical Concepts", November 2017.

Dr Qi Chen (as first supervisor, with Prof Steve Walsh), "Shifting Embodied Participation in Multiparty University Student Meetings" , July 2017.

Dr Tugba Aslan (as first supervisor, with Prof Steve Walsh), "A Micro-Analytic Study of Gossip in Elderly Talk", February 2017.

Dr Sumita Supakorn (as second supervisor, with Prof Paul Seedhouse), "Topic Development in Thai EFL Classes: A Conversation Analytic Perspective", December 2016.

Dr Haia Al-Zaidi (as first supervisor, with Prof Paul Seedhouse), "The Practices of Multiple Other-Initiated Repair in Online Second Language Interaction", November 2016.

Dr Aki Siegel (as second supervisor, with Prof Paul Seedhouse), "Longitudinal Development of Word Search Sequences in English as a Lingua Franca Interaction", February 2016.

Teaching

Current teaching

I am Module Leader for:

I also contribute to teaching on:

Dissertation supervision

As of September 2022, I have supervised:

  • 145 MA dissertation projects (known as 'Research Portfolio' on the MA CCC programmes)
  • 1 BA dissertation

Previous teaching

Postgraduate courses I have taught or contributed to include:

  • Discourse Analysis
  • The Social Psychology of Communication
  • Sociolinguistics
  • Culture, Interculturality and Identity
  • Language Learning
  • Research Methods in Applied Linguistics
  • English in the World

Undergraduate courses I have contributed to include

  • Linguistics & Phonetics II: Linguistics Analysis & Pragmatics (sessions on Conversation Analysis)
  • Internationalising Your University Experience (sessions on English as a lingua franca, and international Higher Education)
Publications