Project Team
.jpeg)
Esther Humphries
Esther Humphries’ undergraduate dissertation for English Language underpins the first phase of this project. She has continued to expand and collaborate on this project since she graduated in 2023.
Dr Helen West
Dr Helen West acted as Esther’s undergraduate dissertation supervisor. While analysing Swift’s accent shifts between musical genre, she was inspired to collaborate with musical experts to build a model (the MCM) for better understanding the relationship between musical genre and language.
Dr Ruth Dockwray
Dr Ruth Dockwray is a musicologist specialising in the analysis of popular music tracks. Ruth has developed the Multimodal Composite Model with Helen, Esther and Geoff.
Geoff West
Geoff West is a professional musician: pianist, piano accordionist and vocalist. He has helped to analyse Swift’s music for the development of the Multimodal Composite Model (MCM).
Megan Eastwood
Megan Eastwood is a current undergraduate in English Language. She is using the MCM to investigate Taylor’s Versions, comparing Taylor Swift’s re-recordings with the results of the first phase of the project.
Dr Matt Davies
Dr Matt Davies is Senior Lecturer in English Language whose specialisms include multimodal critical discourse analysis. He has been working with Helen analysing Taylor Swift videos to help refine the MCM. He has published on how computer software can be used to spot patterns in and analyse a corpus of song lyrics (Mark E Smith of The Fall).
