I invite applications from students wishing to conduct MPhil or PhD research in my areas of specialisation.

Current PhD students:

• Xiaoxuan Chen (on metaphor and the literal/nonliteral distinction)

• Nina Haket (on conceptual engineering and lexical semantics)

• Anastasiia Petrenko (on the concept of extended present in English and Russian)

• Silvia Bodei (on aspects of human-AI communication)

Awarded PhDs:

• 2024. Mireia Cabanes Calabuig, 'Pursuing the meaning of expressiveness: A holistic, radical contextualist account of lexical expressives'. Currently Affiliated Lecturer, University of Cambridge

• 2024.  Sadiyah Shahidullah, 'Rethinking Gricean and post-Gricean categories of meaning: Evidence from Sībawayhian and post-Sībawayhian pragmatics in the Arabic tradition' 

• 2017. Eleni Savva, 'Subsentential speech from a contextualist perspective'

• 2017. Luca Sbordone, 'The contextual adjective: On indexicality, gradability, and vagueness in the adjectival domain'

• 2017. Michael Keane, 'Time and modality in the human mind, and the particular commonality between them: Linguistic and psychological investigations'

• 2017. Roberto Sileo, 'The semantics and pragmatics of racial and ethnic slurring language: Towards a comprehensive radical contextualist account'. Currently Affiliated Lecturer, University of Cambridge

• 2015. Chi-Hé  Elder, 'On the forms of conditionals and the functions of if'. Currently Associate Professor, University of East Anglia

• 2013. Minyao Huang, 'Vagueness in language use: Problems and pseudo-problems'. Currently Research Fellow, Sun Yat-sen University

• 2012. Eleni Kapogianni, 'Irony and the literal versus nonliteral distinction: A typological approach with focus on ironic implicature and strength'. Currently Lecturer, University of Kent

• 2010. Anna Schneider, 'Understanding the primary meaning: A study with reference to requests in Russian and British English', Currently  Senior Teaching Associate, University of Cambridge

• 2009. Alyson Pitts, 'Metamessages of denial: The pragmatics of English negation'. Currently GB Senior Analytical Linguist, Google

• 2006. Jiranthara Srioutai, 'Conceptualisation of time in Thai with special reference to d1ay1II, kh3oe:y, k1aml3ang, y3u:I and c1a'. Currently Professor Emerita, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok

• 2001. Marina Terkourafi, 'Politeness in Cypriot Greek: A frame-based approach'. Currently Professor and Chair of Sociolinguistics, University of Leiden

• 2001. Hye-Kyung Lee, 'The semantics and pragmatics of connectives with reference to English and Korean'. Currently Associate Professor, Ajou University, South Korea

Updated 9 February 2026