I am a lecturer on the BA English Language and Linguistics programme and my main research interests are focussed around sociolinguistics, specifically language variation and change. I began to specialise in language variation and change in my BA dissertation where I investigated the geographical diffusion of accent features to Hull, East Yorkshire. My MA research focussed on the semi-rural village of Brayton, North Yorkshire where I compared language use with the reported use of particular accent and dialect features in nearby urban centres. My recent doctoral thesis explores how the language variety spoken in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire has changed over the last century and how the changes observed across traditional language features are affected by language external factors such as dialect contact and language attitudes as well as language internal factors such as phonological and grammatical frequency.