Dr Dawn Knight BA, MA, PhD (Nottingham), FLSW

Trosolwyg

I am a member of the Centre for Language and Communication Research.

I am the Principal Investigator on a 3 ½ year, £1.8 million ESRC/AHRC funded inter-disciplinary and multi-institutional project which began in March 2016. The project, which is entitled ‘CorCenCC: Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes (The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh): A community driven approach to linguistic corpus construction’, will create a large scale, open source corpus of contemporary Welsh language.

The creation of CorCenCC is community-driven with impact being generated through a user-informed design, harnessing opportunities afforded by mobile technologies, specifically crowdsourcing (via an app) and community collaboration. Academic partners (CIs) on this project include colleagues from Cardiff, Swansea, Lancaster and Bangor Universities. More information is available on our website.

Other contributors and collaborators include software engineers, Welsh language experts and a range of external stakeholders including the Welsh Government, National Assembly for Wales, Gwasg y Lolfa, Welsh for Adults, Welsh Joint Education Committee and University of Wales Dictionary of the Welsh Language.

Professional memberships

Editorial positions and other external activity

• Member of the ESRC’s Centres for Doctoral Training (CDT) Peer Review College (2016+).
• General Secretary for BAAL, the British Association for Applied Linguistics (2013 - present). BAAL is a professional association based in the UK (with an international professional membership of just under 1000 members), which provides a forum for people interested in language and applied linguistics. Some responsibilities of this post include: communicating messages from outside bodies/individuals to the Chair, the EC or the membership (e.g. notice of meetings, research opportunities, etc.); responding where necessary or raise issues with EC/Chair and writing letters on behalf of BAAL to various bodies.
• Former Meetings Secretary for BAAL (2010-2013) where I was responsible for coordinating the organisation of the annual conference for the Association, prior to that I was the Postgraduate Development and Liaison Officer for BAAL (2007-2009).
• Co-organiser of the IVACS (Inter-Varietal and Applied Corpus Studies) 2006 and IVACS 2014 conferences.
• Editor (with Professor Svenja Adolphs) of the Routledge Handbook of English Language and the Digital Humanities [under contract].
• Reviews Editor for the Yearbook of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics, 2012-2015 (Springer Verlag).
• Reviewer for International Journal of Corpus Linguistics (IJCL), Journal of Pragmatics, Context and Discourse, Corpora Journal and the BAAL annual book prize.
• Programme committee member: Big Data and Natural Language Processing workshop hosted at IEEE Big Data, December 2016.
• Programme committee member: 9th International Corpus Linguistics conference, July 2017, University of Birmingham; Challenges in the Management of Large Corpora + Big Data and Natural Language Processing joint meeting, July 2017, University of Birmingham.
• Advisory Editorial Board member for the Journal of Corpus Linguistics and Pragmatics (Springer Verlag).
• Advisory board member for Language, Texts and Society (LTS) – a journal produced at the University of Nottingham.
• Advisory board member for CLiC – a corpus tool for the analysis of literary texts, led by Professor Mahlberg, University of Birmingham (funded by the AHRC).

Membership of professional bodies and learned societies

• Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), 2013 – present.
• Member, BAAL (British Association for Applied Linguistics).
• Executive Committee member, CRiLLS (Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences, Newcastle University), 2011 – 2015.
• Member, CRAL (Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics), 2006 – 2011.
• Member, IVACS (Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies), 2004 – present
• Member, AILA (International Association of Applied Linguistics), 2004 – present
• Member, Language Teaching and Technology; Language Learning and Teaching and iLaB (ICT) research clusters in ECLS, 2012 – 2015.

Previous academic positions

• 2016 – present: Reader in Applied Linguistics, Cardiff University
• 2015 – 2016: Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Cardiff University
• 2014 – 2015: Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Newcastle University
• 2011 – 2014: Lecturer in Applied Linguistics, Newcastle University
• 2006 – 2011: Research Assistant (then Associate, then Fellow), The University of Nottingham

Speaking engagements

Invitations to address conferences, workshops and seminars

• Knight, D. (2017). Qualitative Analysis of NSS Reponses. Invited presentation delivered to the Business Intelligence Unit, 3/4/17, Cardiff University.
• Knight, D. (2017). Big Data and Corpus Construction Introducing CorCenCC. Invited seminar presentation at the Investigating (with) Big Data event run by the Cardiff University Digital Humanities Network, 24/5/17, Cardiff University.
• Knight, D. (2017). Research funding and building networks in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: the case of CorCenCC (Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes - The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh). Invited seminar presentation as part of the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies 2016/17 research seminar series, 5/4/17, Cardiff University.
• Knight, D. (2017). Constructing corpora of minoritized languages: A focus on CorCenCC. Invited plenary presentation delivered as part of the Corpus Linguistics in the South Conference, 4/3/17, Birkbeck University.
• Knight, D. (2016). Constructing E-Language Corpora: a focus on CorCenCC (The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh). Invited plenary presentation at the 4th Computer-Mediated Communication and Social Media Corpora for the Humanities conference, 27-28/9/16, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.
• Knight, D. (2016). Innovations in corpus-based research. Invited seminar presentation at the Tokyo Chapter of the Japanese Association of Language Teachers (JALT) meeting, 9/9/16, Tokyo, Japan.
• Knight, D. (2016). The application of corpora: supporting and informing the pedagogic landscape. Invited plenary presentation at the InForm Conference, 16/7/16, Durham University.
• Knight, D. (2016). Corpora and Pedagogy: developing the community-driven National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh. Invited presentation at the Welsh for Adults annual conference, 8/7/16, Cardiff.
• Knight, D. (2016). The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh: A community driven approach to linguistic corpus construction. Invited presentation at the UCREL Corpus Research Seminar Series, 9/6/16, Lancaster University.
• Knight, D. (2015). Dispelling the myths: the ubiquity of corpora in linguistic research. Invited keynote presentation at the annual. Cardiff University ENCAP Postgraduate Conference, 2/6/15, Cardiff University.
• Knight, D. (2015). Multimodal Corpus Linguistics. Invited presentation delivered at the joint seminar between Lund University Humanities Lab and the Linneaus Centre CCL, 26/5/15, Lund University.
• Knight, D. (2015). Analysing Literature using Corpora. Invited presentation delivered as part of the Cardiff BookTalk series, 30/4/15, Cardiff University.
• Knight, D. (2015). Multimodal Corpus Linguistics. Invited presentation delivered as part of the Vlunch Seminar Series, School of Computer Science and informatics, Cardiff University, 30th April.
• Knight, D. (2014). Practical applications for corpora. Invited workshop at Welsh tutors conference, 5/12/14, Cardiff University.
• Knight, D. (2014). (Re)defining context in corpus linguistics. Invited keynote presentation at Information Visualization seminar series, 5/11/14, Potsdam University of Applied Sciences.
• Knight, D. and Murphy, B. (2014). Exploring the meta in 'meta-data': corpus investigations in sociolinguistic contexts. Invited keynote presentation at IVACS 2014, 13/6/14, Newcastle University.
• Knight, D. (2013). A corpus-based approach to Digital Discourse. Invited keynote presentation at the BAAL Language and New Media SIG event ‘Research Methods and Approaches for Analysing Social Media’, 22/11/13, Leicester University.
• Knight, D. (2013). A corpus-based approach to Digital Discourse. Invited keynote presentation at theBAAL Language and New Media SIG event ‘Research Methods and Approaches for Analysing Social Media’, 22/11/13, Leicester University.
• Knight, D. (2013). Record – Transcribe – Code – Analyse: Tackling Multimodal Data. Invited keynote presentation at the annualNewcastle University ECLS Postgraduate Conference, 20/6/13, Newcastle University.
• Knight, D. (2013). Recording and analysing real-life interaction ‘in the wild’. Invited keynote presentation at the Cardiff School of English PhD Applied Linguistics (Lexical Studies) Annual conference, 21/3/13, Cardiff University, Wales, UK.
• Knight, D. (2013). Gesture and talk ‘in the wild’. Invited keynote presentation at the BAAL Corpus Linguistics SIG event “Building and Mining Small Specialised Corpora”. Edinburgh, 22/2/13.
• Carter, R. and Knight, D. (2012). CANELC – The Cambridge and Nottingham eLanguage Corpus. Invited keynote presentation at theELT Insights Seminar, 24/1/13, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• Knight, D. and Adolphs, S. (2011). Multimodal Corpora for Sign Language Research. Invited keynote presentation at the 2nd Symposium in Applied Sign Linguistics. “Documenting Sign Languages for Learning and Teaching Purposes”. Bristol, June 2011.
• Knight, D. (2011). Mobile and Location-based Data: Capture, Representation and Analysis. Paper presented at the CAQDAS digital social research showcase event, 23rd March 2011, Oxford, UK.

Conference papers, workshops, posters and conference demonstrations

• Knight, D., Fitzpatrick, T. and Morris, S. (2017). CorCenCC (Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes - The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh): An overview. Paper presented as part of the annual British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) conference, September 2017, University of Leeds.
• Morris, S., Fitzpatrick, T. and Knight, D. (2017). Creating pedagogic wordlists in an under-resourced language. Poster presented as part of the annual British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) conference, September 2017, University of Leeds.
• Rees, M., Watkins, G., Needs, J., Morris, S. and Knight, D. (2017). Creating a Bespoke Corpus Sampling Frame for a Minoritised Language: CorCenCC, the National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh. Paper presented at the CL2017 conference, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, 24-28 July 2017.
• Piao, S., Rayson, P., Watkins, G., Knight, D. and Donnelly, K. (2017). Towards a Welsh Semantic Tagger: Creating Lexicons for A Resource Poor Language. Paper presented at the Corpus Linguistics Conference 2017, July 2017, University of Birmingham.
• Piao, S., Rayson, P., Knight, D., Watkins, G. and Donnelly, K. (2017). Towards a Welsh Semantic Tagger: Creating Lexicons for A Resource Poor Language. Paper presented at the CL2017 conference, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, 24-28 July 2017.
• Needs, J., Knight, D., Morris, S., Fitzpatrick, T., Thomas, E. and Neale, S. (2017). "How will you make sure the material is suitable for children?": User-informed design of Welsh corpus-based learning/teaching tools. Paper presented at the CL2017 conference, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, 24-28 July 2017.
• Neale, S., Spasić, I., Needs, J., Watkins, G., Morris, S., Fitzpatrick, T., Marshall, L. and Knight, D. (2017). The CorCenCC Crowdsourcing App: A Bespoke Tool for the User-Driven Creation of the National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh. Paper presented at the CL2017 conference, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, 24-28 July 2017.
• Knight, D., Morris, S., Fitzpatrick, T. and Anthony, L. (2016). Charting the vocabulary of a minoritised language: Challenges and opportunities in the creation and application of the National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh. Paper presented at the Vocab@Tokyo international conference, September 2016, Tokyo, Japan.
• Fitzpatrick, T., Knight, D. and Morris, S. (2016). Creating pedagogical wordlists: a comparison of thematic and corpus approaches. Poster presented at the Pacific Second Language Research Forum (PacSLRF2016), September 2016, Tokyo, Japan.
• Knight, D., Fitzpatrick, T. and Morris, S. (2016). CorCenCC - Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes (The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh). WISERD (Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods), July 2016, Swansea University.
• Handford, M. and Knight, D. (2016). Corpus-informed discourse analysis: a methodology for exploring context in spoken corpora. Paper presented at the IVACS 2016 conference, June 2016, Bath Spa University.
• Knight, D., Neale, S., Spasic, I., Morris, S. and Fitzpatrick, T. (2016). Crowdsourcing corpus construction: contextualizing plans for CorCenCC (Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes - The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh). Paper presented at the IVACS 2016 conference, June 2016, Bath Spa University.
• Needs, J., Rees, M., Watkins, G., Morris, S., Knight, D. and Fitzpatrick, T. (2016). CorCenCC (Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes – The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh): Challenges and applications in a minoritised language context. Paper presented at the IVACS 2016 conference, June 2016, Bath Spa University.
• Piao, S., Rayson, P., Archer, D., Bianchi, F., Dayrell, C. El-Haj, M., Jiménez, R-M., Knight, D., Michal Křen, M., Löfberg, L., Nawab, R., Shafi, J., The, P-L. and Mudraya, O. (2016). Lexical Coverage Evaluation of Large-scale Multilingual Semantic Lexicons for Twelve Languages. Paper delivered at the LREC (Language Resources Evaluation) 2016 Conference, May 2016, Slovenia.
• Adolphs, S. Knight, D., Ofemile, A. and Clark, L. (2016). Crowdsourcing new communities of discourse: analysing human-computer interaction in different contexts. Paper presented at the AAAL (American Association of Applied Linguistics) conference, March 2016, Florida, USA.
• Knight, D. and Adolphs, S. (2015). Language in the Digital Age: Revisiting the Speech-Writing Continuum. Paper delivered as part of the Topics in Corpus Linguistics for Social Media Research workshop, Corpus Linguistics 2015, July 2015, Lancaster University.
• Knight, D. (2014). The ‘spokenness’ of e-language. Paper presented at the Corpus Linguistics in the South Conference, November 2014, Reading University.
• Seedhouse, P. and Knight, D. (2014). Using technology to solve a research problem. Paper presented at the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) annual meeting, September 2014, Warwick University.
• Adolphs, S. and Knight, D. (2014). Capturing Formulaic Sequences 'in the wild'. Paper presented as part of the New Insights into the Acquisition, Assessment and Pedagogy of Formulaic Languagecolloquium held at the American Association for Applied Linguistics conference, 23/3/14, Portland, Oregon.
• Knight, D. (2013). Gesture and talk ‘in the wild’. Paper presented at the American Association for Applied Linguistics 2013 Conference (AAAL), March 2013, Dallas, Texas.
• Knight, D. (2012). Gesture and talk ‘in the wild’. Paper presented at the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) annual meeting, September 2012, Southampton University.
• Adolphs, S. and Knight, D. (2012). Formality and professional discourse in online contexts. Paper presented at the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) annual meeting, September 2012, Southampton University.
• Knight, D. and Adolphs, S. (2012). CANELC: Cambridge and Nottingham eLanguage Corpus. Paper presented at the Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies (IVACS) symposium, January 2012, Cambridge University.
• Walsh, S. and Knight, D. (2012). Investigating small group teaching in a higher education context. Paper presented at the CUP English Profile Seminar, February 2012, Cambridge University.
• Knight, D. and Adolphs, S. (2012). CANELC: Cambridge and Nottingham eLanguage Corpus. Paper presented at the Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies (IVACS) symposium, January 2012, Cambridge University.
• Knight, D. and Walsh, S. (2012). Investigating small group teaching in a higher education context. Paper presented at the Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies (IVACS) symposium, January 2012, Cambridge University.
• Knight, D., Mullany, L., Adolphs, S., Harvey, K., Hunt, D., Smith, C. and Atkins, S. (2011). New Developments in multi-modal Corpus Analysis. Paper presented at World Congress of Applied Linguistics (AILA), August 2011, Beijing, China.
• Knight, D. And Adolphs, S. (2011). Experiencing space and place: A multi-modal corpus approach. Paper presented at the BAAL annual conference, September 2011, Bristol UWE.
• Knight, D. and Adolphs, S. (2010). Space, place and SMS: capturing context and network in multimodal corpus development. Paper presented at the BAAL annual conference, September 2010, Edinburgh.
• Adolphs, S., Carter, R. and Knight, D. (2010). Second phase multi-modal corpora: Heterogeneous datasets for linguistic analysis. Paper delivered at the 5th Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies (IVACS) conference, June 2010, University of Edinburgh.
• Knight, D., Tennent, P., Adolphs, S. and Carter, R. (2010). Developing heterogeneous corpora using the Digital Replay System (DRS). Paper delivered at the LREC 2010 (Language Resources Evaluation Conference) Workshop on Multimodal Corpora: Advances in Capturing, Coding and Analyzing Multimodality, May 2010, Giessen, Germany.
• Knight, D., Carter, R. and Adolphs, S. (2010). Corpora and context: A discussion of ‘Thrill’. Paper presented at the 31st ICAME conference, May 2010, Giessen University, Germany.
• Knight, D. (2010). Language, Corpora and Context: A 'Thrilling' Case Study. Paper presented at theIVACS Annual Research Symposium, January 2010, University of Leeds.
• Adolphs, S. and Knight, D. (2009). Language, Corpus and Context: Record, represent and replay. Presentation delivered as part of the Second and Foreign Language Pedagogy Seminar Series, October 2009, School of Education, Nottingham University.
• Carter, R., Adolphs, S. and Knight, D. (2009). Language, Corpus and Context: ubiquitous computing and corpus development. Paper delivered at the BAAL annual conference, September 2009, Newcastle.
• Knight, D., Adolphs, S., Carter, R. and Tennent, P. (2009). A multi-modal approach to the construction and analysis of spoken corpora. A two-hour workshop co-ordinated at the Corpus Linguistics 2009 conference, July 2009, Liverpool University.
• Knight, D. (2009). Collecting and collating heterogeneous datasets for multi-modal corpora. Paper be presented at the Corpus Linguistics 2009 conference, July 2009, Liverpool University.
• Adolphs, S., Carter, R. Knight, D., Brundell, P. and Tennent, P. (2009). Constructing and interrogating linguistic corpora using heterogeneous datasets. A two-hour workshop co-ordinated at the 5th International Conference on e-Social Science (ICeSS), Cologne, June 2009.
• Adolphs, S., Knight, D. and Carter, R. (2009). Redefining context in communication: a multi-modal perspective. Paper presented at the 30th ICAME conference, May 2009, Lancaster University.
• Knight, D., Adolphs, S. and Carter, R. (2009). Multi-modal corpus construction and analysis. Poster presented at the 30th ICAME conference, May 2009, Lancaster University.
• Knight, D. and Adolphs, S. (2009). Corpus Perspectives: from production to reception. Paper presented at the Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies (IVACS) Annual Research Symposium, January 2009, University of Edinburgh.
• Adolphs, S. and Knight, D. (2008). Analysing Discourse Markers: A Multi-Modal Approach. Paper presented at the BAAL 2008 annual conference, September 2008, University of Swansea.
• Brundell, P., Tennent, P., Greenhalgh, C., Knight, D., Crabtree, A., O’Malley, C., Ainsworth, S., Clarke, D., Carter, R. & Adolphs, S. (2008). Digital Replay system (DRS): A Tool for Interaction Analysis. Paper delivered at the International Conference for the Learning Sciences 2008 (ICLS), Utrecht, The Netherlands. June-July 2008.
• Brundell, P., Knight, D., Tennent, P., Naeem, A., Adolphs, S., Ainsworth, S., Carter, R., Clarke, D., Crabtree, A., Greenhalgh, C., O’Malley, C., Pridmore, T. and Rodden, T. (2008). The experience of using Digital Replay System for social science research. Paper presented at the 4th International Conference on e-Social Science (ICeSS), the University of Manchester, June 2008.
• Knight, D. and Evans, D. (2008). Multi-Modal Corpora, Discourse and Gesture. Paper presented atAAAL 2008, Washington DC, US.
• Knight, D. (2008). Gesturing power in dyadic conversations: A study of academic supervisory meetings. Paper delivered at the 4th Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies (IVACS) conference, June 2008, University of Limerick.
• Knight, D. and Tennent, P. (2008). Introducing DRS: A tool for the future of Corpus Linguistic research and analysis. Poster presentation with demo, delivered at the 6th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), Palais des Congrés Mansour Eddahbi, Marrakech, Morocco.
• Knight, D., Adolphs, S., Tennent, P. and Carter, R. (2008). The Nottingham Multi-Modal Corpus: A Demonstration. Paper during the ‘Multimodal Corpora’ workshop held at the 6th Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), Palais des Congrés Mansour Eddahbi, Marrakech, Morocco.
• Adolphs, S., Knight, D. and Evans, D. (2007). Multi-modal corpora. Presentation delivered as part of the CRAL seminar series, University of Nottingham, October 2007.
• Adolphs, S. and Knight, D. (2007). HeadTalk. Presentation delivered as part of the Technologies for Enhancing Visual Methods workshop at the 3rd International eSocial Science Conference (ICeSS), University of Michigan, US.
• Tennent, P. and Knight, D. (2007). Multi-modal corpora: Adapting gesture recognition techniques for linguistic analysis. Poster delivered at the 3rd International eSocial Science Conference (ICeSS), October 2007, University of Michigan, US.
• Adolphs, S., Carter, R., Knight, D. and Evans, D. (2007). e-Social Science and Applied Linguistics: a multimodal corpus case study. Paper delivered at the New Horizons in Linguistics symposium, September 2007, University of Oxford.
• Knight, D., Evans, D., Carter, R. and Adolphs, S. (2007). Multi-modal corpus design, construction and use. Paper delivered at the BAAL 2007 annual conference, September 2007, University of Edinburgh.
• Knight, D., Evans, D., Adolphs, S. and Carter, R. (2007). Approaching the problems: Capturing, coding and analysing gesture in multi-modal communication data. Paper delivered at the Corpus Linguistics 2007 Conference, July 2007, University of Birmingham.
• Knight, D. (2007). HeadTalk: The development and exploration of multi-modal linguistic corpora. Paper delivered at the Annual Nottingham University Postgraduate Symposium, 2007.
• Knight, D. (2006). Little old ladies and dodgy old men: An exploration of the representation of old age in everyday spoken discourse. Paper delivered at GLoBE conference, September 2006, University of Warsaw.
• Carter, R., Knight, D. and Adolphs, S. (2006). Head-talk: Towards a Multi-Modal Corpus. Paper delivered at the BAAL 2006 annual conference, September 2006, University College, Cork.
• Knight, D., Bayoumi, S., Mills, S., Crabtree, A., Adolphs, S., Pridmore, T. and Carter, R. (2006). Beyond the Text: Construction and Analysis of Multi-Modal Linguistic Corpora. Paper presented at 2nd International Conference on e-Social Science (ICeSS), Manchester, 28 - 30 June 2006.
• French, A., Wright, M., Greenhalgh, C., Knight, D., Brundell, P., O'Malley, C., Ainsworth, S., Clarke, D. and Tom Rodden. (2006). ‘Replaytool’ software in practice. Poster presented at the 2nd annual international eSocial Science Conference (ICeSS), June 2006, Manchester University.
• Knight, D., Adolphs, S. and Carter, R. (2006). The Multi-Modal Corpus: Coding and representing data- the issues. Paper delivered at the 3rd Inter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies conference, May 2006, University of Nottingham.
• Knight, D. and Adolphs, S. (2006). Analysing Spoken Corpora: Methodological Issues and Technological Challenges. Delivered at theBAAL SIG Seminar (Special Interest Group: Corpus Linguistics), April 2006, The Open University, Milton Keynes.
• Knight, D. (2006). Developing a Multi-Modal Corpus: Data Coding Issues. Paper delivered at theInter-Varietal Applied Corpus Studies (IVACS) Annual Research Symposium, February 2006, University of Limerick.