We invite staff and postgraduate students from across the University to a workshop on automated text analysis. In this workshop we would like attendees to bring along data from their own projects or ideas for data-driven projects in development which involve text analysis. Participants will be able to discuss potential methods, tools, issues and collaborations, with the ultimate of goal of finding practical solutions to text analysis tasks.

The workshop conveners work in the field of Corpus Linguistics, which focuses on the semi-automated analysis of corpora (collections of texts). Corpus Linguistic methods and tools can potentially be applied to many research areas, such as the social sciences and health (in both online and offline contexts) and to the study of text from patient groups or specialist communities.

The workshop is part of a STEAM-funded project to expand staff and postgraduate student skill sets and hopefully open up new avenues of research within BCU. It is a collaboration between Robert Lawson (English), Pelham Carter (Psychology), Matt Gee (English) and Andrew Kehoe (English). The project is also investigating discourses of sexuality, risk and desire in online forums.