Sondos Hassan Ibrahim

Biography

I was born in Sudan and grew up in the West Midlands. I completed my undergraduate and masters’ degrees at University College London where I also worked part time, mentoring and teaching for the university’s widening participation team. This work involved designing and leading educational workshops for gifted and talented young people from social backgrounds that are under-represented at university. This motivated my decision to pursue a career in teaching, research and public engagement. Whilst at UCL, I was awarded the Rhiannon Jones Memorial Prize for outstanding contribution to the life and work of the English department and the DSC Travel Award to pursue research in Jaipur, India.  I began a fully-funded PhD studentship in cognitive linguistics at Northumbria University  in October 2014. 

Qualifications

MA English Linguistics, 2014  (Distinction) – University College London

BA English Language and Literature, 2013 (2.1) – University College London 

Thesis

'Cross-Cultural Cognitive Metaphors of Pain and Pain Management'

Research themes & scholarly interests

As a student at UCL, I developed a strong interest in English Language variation. I wrote my undergraduate and masters’ dissertations on the socio-political English lexis of South Africa and Nigeria. This in turn informed my decision to integrate a cross-cultural dimension into my present study on healthcare communication. My PhD research uses cognitive linguistic tools to identify the cultural-specific metaphors used to describe pain amongst immigrant patients with fibromyalgia. The long term aim of this work is to make the pain assessments used by healthcare professionals more effective particularly when treating patients who are non-native speakers of English.

I am particularly interested in the ways in which medical and nursing practice can be informed by linguistic research. I maintain a strong interest in World Englishes, historical linguistics and lexical semantics.

Supervisor(s) 

Dr. Mimi Huang and Dr. Rachel Edwards

Sponsors & collaborators

Northumbria University PGR three year studentship

Current/recent projects

10^th Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Postgraduate Conference in Linguistics, 20^th March 2015, Co-organiser 

Key Publications/Outputs

Sondos Hassan Ibrahim, A Corpus Based Investigation of The Given Before New Principle in Tanzanian English,9^th Lancaster University Conference in Linguistics and Language Teaching, July 14^th 2014.

Sondos Hassan Ibrahim, Legitimising Language: South African English and the OED, British Conference of Undergraduate Research (Plymouth University), April 16^th 2013.

Further information

Society Membership

The Philological Society
The International Society for the Linguistics of English

www.twitter.com/sondoshibrahim

www.academia.edu/SondosHassanIbrahim