Joanna Gavins is Professor of English Language and Literature in the School of English at the University of Sheffield. Her central research interests are interdisciplinary in nature and her work draws upon knowledge from the cognitive sciences in order to understand how human beings conceptualise and experience language.
Joanna was a Co-Investigator on the Plastics: Redefining Single-Use project and she leads the linguistics work package on the Many Happy Returns project. Along with her colleagues, Dr Seth Mehl and Dr Emma Franklin, she is investigating the language people use to describe their interactions with plastics and the extent to which the public’s conceptualisation of plastic use and reuse is aligned with that of local authorities, government organisations, and manufacturers. The aim of this branch of the project is to understand how language can be used as a tool to promote changes in thinking and behaviour.
Read: How a poem removed 2 tonnes of nitrogen oxide from the surrounding environment by Joanna Gavins.
You find Joanna Gavins on Twitter.