Lisa is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics and Communication at Birkbeck. She has published in various fields: Language Pathology (Aphasia); Sign Language/Deaf Studies and Sociolinguistics. In recent years her scholarship has focused on two key areas: issues of identity at micro and macro-discursive/linguistic levels and intergovernmental organisational language planning, policy and practice. She has undertaken an ethnolinguistic and sociolinguistic investigation of the International Maritime Organisation, United Nations (London) and critically evaluated its current language policy. She is a member of the Study Group on Language and the United Nations, New York.
Lisa is interested in how international organisations (in particular the United Nations) are constructed, constituted and operate in and through language(s). Her work has focused on the language of diplomacy; the construction of organisational identity through discursive and figurative means, and organisational language policy and practice. Her recent research has explored the history of the United Nations’ language policy and she has also critically analysed its current language policy for internal and external (outreach and fieldwork) operations, proposing changes to the current language regime in order to achieve the organisational goals of equity and inclusion, and the successful implementation and execution of the Sustainable Development Goals.