Government Communication Service visit

Visit as part of home nations tour by new Chief Executive Officer

Government Communication Service Chief Executive Officer has visited the University as part of a tour of the home nations.

The visit by Chief Executive Officer Simon Baugh explored research in the school of English, Communication and Philosophy, focusing on the bilingual culture of Wales.

How the school’s research and applied linguistics tools might help to address government communications challenges were explored, considering specific examples ranging from Net Zero goals to building the UK’s international reputation.

Applied Linguistics specialist Dr Dawn Knight demonstrated major Cardiff-led projects of particular significance to global communication changes in everyday life since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conversations focussed on the FreeTxt: supporting bilingual free-text survey and questionnaire data analysis, Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes - The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh (CorCenCC), Interactional Variation Online and the Coronavirus Discourse project (led by Nottingham University), and their potential to overcome contemporary communication challenges including inclusivity in hybrid meetings.

Research Associate Geraldine Mark also showcased her work on Interactional Variation Online, with PhD student and research assistant Katharine Young supporting presentations across the FreeTxt and CorCenCC projects.

Keen to explore new practice in communications and elevate standards within government, CEO Simon Baugh also toured the newly-opened sbarc|spark with academic director Professor Chris Taylor.

Reader in Applied Linguistics Dr Dawn Knight is principal investigator on FreeTxt: supporting bilingual free-text survey and questionnaire data analysis, and the Welsh Automatic Text Summarisation project. She has recently led major projects including Corpws Cenedlaethol Cymraeg Cyfoes (The National Corpus of Contemporary Welsh - CorCenCC) and Learning English-Welsh bilingual embeddings and applications in text categorisation.