I am an Associate Professor/Reader of Linguistics. My primary research interests are children and adults with speech and language impairment, e.g. SLI, acquired aphasia, Augmented and Alternative Communication (AAC), and language and interaction in dementia. I am co-editor of the international journal Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Disorders.
In my research, I particularly focus on the identification of recurrent patterns and practices of relevance for people with communicative impairments and their relatives in order to lead as high a quality of life as possible, irrespective of their disease or other challenges. The research environments with which I am associated, stress remaining capacities and abilities, rather than deficits and problems, and how these capacities can be transformed and used in order to optimize a good life, inclusion, and participation in everyday social interaction – for all. Methodologically, I primarily work within a multimodal Conversation Analytical (CA) tradition, however, often combined with ethnography, and at times, experimental, semi-natural approaches. Multilingual, multicultural, and interpreted encounters are in focus in much of my work, also covering communicative impairments – a clearly neglected area, despite increased globalization. For an example, please see Plejert et al. (2017) on multilingual interaction and dementia.
