Karyn Stapleton, Catherine Loveday, Kristy Beers Fägersten & Richard Stephens

Karyn Stapleton is a Senior Lecturer in Interpersonal Communication at Ulster University, Northern Ireland (UK). She holds the degrees of BSc Hons Communication (1st class) and D.Phil. in Communication & Psychology, both from Ulster University. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (2015). Karyn’s core research interests are in swearing, interpersonal communication, discourse analysis, social psychology, pragmatics, and identity. She has published widely in these areas, including in Lingua, Discourse & Society, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Identities, Organization, and Language in Society. She has contributed entries to the Handbook of Pragmatics (de Gruyter, 2010, eds. Miriam Locher and Sage Graham), the Handbook of Communication Skills (Routledge, 2018, ed. Owen Hargie) and the Handbook of Pragmatics Online (Benjamin, forthcoming, chapter co-authored with Kristy Beers Fägersten). She has co-edited Devolution and Identity (Ashgate/Routledge, 2006/2017, with John Wilson) and Advances in Swearing Research (Benjamins, 2017, with Kristy Beers Fägersten). From 2018-2020, Karyn was joint Vice-Chair of the Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction (ICSI) section of the European Communication Research and Education Association. She is currently an Associate Editor of Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. She is a member of the research networks Swearing in Scandinavia and Consortium for Research About Profanity. She also holds professional membership of the British Psychological Society, the International Pragmatics Association, the International Communication Association, and the International Association of Language and Social Psychology. From 2014-17, Karyn was a member of a Royal Irish Academy multidisciplinary committee. She was on the Organising Committees for the 15th International Pragmatics Association Conference (Belfast, 2017); and the ECREA Sectional ICSI conferences (2011, Belfast, Northern Ireland; 2019, Tilburg, Netherlands). In 2017, she was the Keynote Speaker at the 5th Swearing in Scandinavia Symposium, Helsinki, Finland. Catherine Loveday is a graduate of the University of Westminster (formerly PCL) She began her career with a PhD in the neuropsychology of memory and ageing, supervised by Alan Parkin (University of Sussex) & Brenda Walter (University of Westminster) and continues to focus on the nature of normal and impaired memory, in particular autobiographical memory. Her particular area of expertise lies in cognitive assessment (especially memory and executive function) and the use of cognitive profiling for the diagnosis and clinical management of hydrocephalus, Anorexia Nervosa, traumatic brain injury and dementia. Catherine has also published papers across an eclectic range of other topics including the relationship between stress hormones and attachment in adolescence as well as the psychology of music. Catherine is also an active member of the BPS, as Deputy Chair to the Standing Conference Committee, a member of the editorial committee for The Psychologist and a member of the Research Board. Catherine has a passion for public engagement with science, is regularly invited to give public lectures and has also appeared as an expert psychologist in a number of television and radio programmes Kristy Beers Fägersten is professor of English linguistics at Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research disciplines include pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and conversation analysis. Her publications feature analyses of the language of media and popular culture, with a special focus on language play, humour, and swearing. She is the author of "Who’s Swearing Now? The Social Aspects and Pragmatic Functions of Conversational Swearing" (2012) and "Language Play in Contemporary Swedish Comic Strips" (2021); she is the editor of "Watching TV with a Linguist" (2016), and co-editor of "Comic Art and Feminism in the Baltic Sea Region: Transnational Perspectives" (2021), the Journal of Pragmatics-special issue, "Linguistic and pragmatic outcomes of contact with English" (2018), and (with Karyn Stapleton) of "Advances in Swearing Research" (2017). Forthcoming publications on swearing include “Swearing”, co-authored with Karyn Stapleton, in the Handbook of Pragmatics Online (2022), and “The evolution of swearing in television catchphrases”, co-authored with Monika Bednarek, in Languages and Literature (2022). As a recipient of the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education (STINT) scholarship, Beers Fägersten was Visiting Scholar at Ohio State University (2012). She was also awarded a Södertörn University sabbatical scholarship, spent as Visiting Researcher at Bremen University (2016), a Wenner-Gren sabbatical scholarship, spent as Visiting Research at the University of Michigan (2018), and Resident Researcher scholarship from Villa San Michele, Capri (2021). Beers Fägersten is a member of the research networks Swearing in Scandinavia (2012--), Consortium for Research about Profanity (2020--), Nordic Network of Comics Research (2018--), and the Swedish Society for the Studies of English (2006--), of which she is the current president (2021--). Dr Richard Stephens is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Keele University. Richard researches the psychobiology of swearing including why people swear in response to pain. Richard also researches the psychology of alcohol and the alcohol hangover. Richard is Chair of the British Psychological Society Psychobiology Section and a founder member of the international Alcohol Hangover Research Group. Richard was winner of the 2014 Wellcome Trust/ Guardian Science Writing Prize and contributes regularly to TV, radio, print and online media. Richard’s first book Black Sheep The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad was published to critical acclaim and was recently announced as the winner of the British Psychological Society Book of the Year Award (Popular Science) 2016.