Applied Linguistics — Sociolinguistics — Medical Humanities

How people make meaning
under conditions of uncertainty,
suffering, and transition.

That is the question underneath the work — infertility blogs, patient–AI communication, digital communities negotiating faith and identity. Language is where this becomes visible. I study it as evidence, not decoration.

Researching how language shapes lived experience — in infertility care, patient–AI interaction, identity, and belonging.

PhD, Applied Linguistics, Birkbeck, University of London·Honorary Research Fellow, Birkbeck·ORCID 0000-0002-6932-245X

I am a sociolinguist and applied linguist based in London, working at the intersection of narrative, health communication, and medical humanities. Most of what shapes a life happens in language too small, too informal, or too easily dismissed to count as evidence — a diagnosis, a clinic visit, a private grief shared at 2 a.m. on a blog nobody official will ever read. My research exists because I believe that smallness is where the meaning is.

all programmes →
  • Programme — 01

    Language, Health & Care

    A metaphor-led positioning analysis of infertility blogs by Muslim women, now extending into patient–AI communication during illness and recovery.

Current work

Seven papers currently under review extending the doctoral corpus — on heteronormative narrative, collective identity, staged small-stories methodology, discursive self-legitimation, and an analytic autoethnography of patient–AI communication during illness and recovery. Alongside this: a forthcoming book chapter on family digital intimacy for Digital Intimacies (Bloomsbury), and new work on epistemic positioning in online perimenopause narratives.

Latest

  • Latest publication

    “WTF Uterus?” Metaphors of the body as positioning in infertility blogs by Muslim women

    Qualitative Health Research, 2026. Full record →

  • Latest essay

    The Discipline of Attention

    On a seven-paper journey through identity, infertility, faith, and the new frontier of AI-mediated care.

Seeing

A photograph, not an illustration. More in Seeing →

News

  • 2026

    Appointed Honorary Research Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London (October 2026 – September 2029).

  • 2026

    “WTF Uterus?” published in Qualitative Health Research.

  • 2026

    Health in Our Hands conference — led on the original concept, theme, and overall planning, and opened the day, as part of a four-person organising team.

  • 2025

    “From offline to online stigma resistance” published in Narrative Inquiry.

Explore further

About traces how this line of thinking developed. Library holds the influences behind it. Notebook is where ideas are allowed to stay unfinished.