English staff

Dr Soudabeh Ananisarab

Lecturer in Drama

Before joining BCU, Dr Soudabeh Ananisarab taught at the University of Nottingham where she completed an MA in English Literature (Distinction) and a PhD in English. She currently teaches on a range of modules, exploring drama both in theory and practice. Soudabeh’s research interests are predominantly in late nineteenth and...

Dr Joseph Anderton

Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature

Joseph Anderton writes and teaches on modern and contemporary literature, particularly in relation to dehumanisation; animals and the environment; homelessness; and literary ethics. He is author of Beckett’s Creatures: Art of Failure after the Holocaust (Bloomsbury, 2016), which considers conceptions of the ‘creature’ and...

Dr Emma Franklin

Lecturer in English Linguistics

Emma is a corpus linguist and lexicologist with expertise in corpus lexicography, critical discourse analysis and narrative strategy. Her research spans a range of topics across critical and applied linguistics, with a particular emphasis on ecolinguistics, critical animal studies, posthumanism and linguistic representations of...

Matt Gee

Research Fellow in Corpus Linguistics

Matt Gee works in the field of Corpus Linguistics, developing research and teaching tools as a member of the Research and Development Unit for English Studies . This includes the WebCorp suite of online search and analysis tools, which are designed to treat the web as a source of linguistic data. WebCorp Live refines the...

Professor Tatiana Grieshofer

Professor in Language and Law

Professor Tatiana Grieshofer is Professor in Language and Law at Birmingham City University. Tatiana’s empirically driven quantitative and qualitative research explores a wide range of language and communication related topics within family, civil, tribunal and criminal legal settings, with a specific interest on the interplay...

Dr Izabela Hopkins

Researcher

Izabela is involved in a number of research projects with a focus on eighteenth-century theatre and literature, in addition to pursuing her own research in the literature of the American South. Izabela obtained her MA in Literature: Politics and Identity from the University of Worcester. Her doctoral thesis explored...

Dr Anthony Howe

Reader in English Literature and MA English Literature Course Director

Dr Anthony Howe is Reader in English Literature and Director of Graduate Research for English at Birmingham City University. Originally from the North East of England, he studied at Liverpool (BA; MA) before taking a PhD at Cambridge. Prior to his current post he taught at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He is a...

Professor Islam Issa

Professor of Public Humanities

Islam Issa is a multi-award-winning author, broadcaster, and curator. A literary critic and historian, his work focuses on cultural history and the reception of English literature in global contexts. In 2022 he was conferred to Professor of Literature and History, and in 2025 the Vice-Chancellor appointed him the UK's...

Professor Howard Jackson

Emeritus Professor

Howard Jackson gained his PhD from Reading University, and his research interests are in English Grammar, Vocabulary and Lexicography. Howard Jackson has written eight books (for Longman and Routledge among others) and numerous articles on grammar, vocabulary and lexicography. An invited speaker at conferences all over Europe,...

Professor Andrew Kehoe

Professor of Corpus Linguistics

Andrew Kehoe is Professor of Corpus Linguistics and REF Unit of Assessment Lead for English (UoA27). He has qualifications in both English and Computer Science, and has for over 20 years worked on a series of UKRI-funded projects in the field of Corpus Linguistics: the automated analysis of patterns and trends in large text...