Who we are

Dr Karyn Stapleton is a Senior Lecturer in Communication at Ulster University, Northern Ireland. As well as taking a particular research focus on swearing, Karyn has broader research interests in interpersonal communication, discourse analysis, social psychology, and identity construction and management. She has published in key international journals, including Discourse & Society, Journal of Language and Social Psychology, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Pragmatics, Identities, Organization, Language in Society. She was a contributor to the Handbook of Pragmatics, writing the chapter on Swearing (de Gruyter, 2010). With Kristy Beers Fägersten, she has co-edited Advances in Swearing Research (Benjamins 2017). Karyn is joint Vice-Chair of the Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction (ICSI) section of the European Communication Research and Education Association. 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. She was a member of the Organising Committee for the 15th International Pragmatics Association Conference (Belfast, 2017); and for the 2nd and 6th 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. She has been an External Examiner at ITT, Dublin, Manchester Metropolitan University, Macquarie University, Australia, and Birkbeck College, University of London.