Dr Helen West
Senior Lecturer
Biography
Dr Helen West is Senior Lecturer in English Language in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and Education at the University of Chester, UK. She was Single Honours English Language Programme leader 2017-18. She has been Student Engagement Officer for English since 2018, organising educational visits and events to promote immersed teaching experiences, as well as promoting student as partners teaching and learning practice, and supportive methods of assessment. Helen's research is focussed in the field of sociolinguistics, specialising in phonetics (accent), exploring the processes of language variation and change using a combination of computational, and quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Teaching and Supervision
Helen teaches a range of topics in English language across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Topics include: sociolinguistics; sociophonetics; phonetics and phonology; child language acquisition, forensic linguistics, language and identity; language and popular culture. She supervises undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research student projects, and designs, delivers and examines modules on English Language programmes.
Research and Knowledge Exchange
Helen’s main research interests are in sociolinguistics, more specifically sociophonetics, exploring the relationship between social factors, such as age, gender, social status, and identity on language/accent. She is currently investigating the accent and identity of Chester as part of the Talking Chester/Cestrian English Project with Dr Jo Close, as Chester’s unique location as a nexus between Liverpool, Manchester and Welsh English varieties provides an ideal opportunity to examine the processes of language variation and change. She is also investigating Taylor Swift’s accent changes between her country and pop style music, to explore the relationship between accent, social/stylistic categories and social-psychological processes.