Brigitte Nerlich

Brigitte Nerlich is Professor of Science, Language, and Society at the Institute for Science and Society (School of Sociology and Social Policy), at the University of Nottingham. She studied French and philosophy in Germany, where she did her PhD in French linguistics. After three years as a Junior Research Fellow in general linguistics at the University of Oxford she moved to Nottingham, where she has worked in the departments of linguistics and psychology. Her current research, mainly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, focuses on the cultural and political contexts in which metaphors and other framing devices are used in the public, policy and scientific debates about emerging technologies, emerging diseases, as well as climate change. She has written books and articles on the history of linguistics, semantic change, metaphor, metonymy, polysemy and, more recently, the sociology of health and illness and the social study of science and technology. She is a Member of the Academy of Social Sciences.