Karen Dwyer

Visiting Lecturer, Analysing Language Structure and Use
MA (Cognitive Neuropsychology, Birkbeck), PhD (Institute of Psychiatry)

Contact details

Department of Applied Linguistics and Communication
Birkbeck, University of London
30 Russell Square, Bloomsbury
London WC1B 5DQ
email: kadwyer@yahoo.com

Profile

Karen Dwyer is a lecturer in Understanding Language Structure and Use and Grammar for Academic Purposes at Birkbeck, and in English for Academic Purposes at UCL. She has previously taught on BA and MA programmes in the Language and Meaning, and the Psychology of Language modules at SOAS.

She is a formal linguistics and Turkish graduate. She studied her Master’s degree in cognitive neuropsychology at Birkbeck and her Doctoral studies, carried out at the Institute of Psychiatry, investigated higher-order semantic processing and theory of mind in schizophrenia.

Her research interests are in communication disorders and how they inform our understanding of the psychological mechanisms of human language processing. In particular, she is interested in the symptom formal thought disorder in schizophrenia, and the impact of contextual sensitivity on linguistic processing in psychosis. She is also interested in theory of mind in psychosis, and the relationship between thought and language disorders and mentalizing abilities.