Dr Anna Wilson

dr anna wilson
Head of Language Studies (REES) & Director of the International Multimodal Communication Centre (OSGA)
anna.wilson@area.ox.ac.uk

My research interests and expertise lie in the fields of cognitive linguistics, critical discourse analysis, multimodal communication, gesture studies, cognitive warfare, and big data analysis, including the use of AI. I have led interdisciplinary projects that bring together linguists, social scientists, engineers, and computer scientists.

I am Director at The International Multimodal Communication Centre (IMCC). Find out about the IMCC Projects and view more on the IMCC YouTube. 

 

Supervisees

  • Yifan Song (MPhil in Linguistics)
  • Jiurui Guo (DPhil in Linguistics)
     

Recent Research and Awards (Principal Investigator)

Research Interests

Research Disciplines:

  • Cognitive linguistics
  • Critical discourse analysis
  • Multimodal communication
  • Gesture studies
  • Cognitive science
  • Cognitive warfare

Research Clusters: 

Contact Information

Email: anna.wilson@area.ox.ac.uk

Selected Publications

Articles

  • Wilson A. (under review). ‘A Right to Voice One’s Truth: Goёteia in Contemporary Russian TV talk shows’. Frontiers in Communication. Section: Multimodality of Communication.
  • Wilson A. (under review). ‘Future Conceptualizations in English Speech and Gesture: Direction and Orientation’. Gesture.
  • Wilson A., and Uhrig P. (under review). ‘Temporal Frames, Blends, and Constructions in RT’s Depictions of the Future: interaction of speech and gesture behind the utterance type “we will go back to where we were”’. Constructions and Frames.
  • Burenko I., Wilson A., and Uhrig P. (under review). A Framework for the Automatic Annotation of Co-speech Gesture in Media Corpora. Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision 2026.
  • Ghaleb, E., Burenko, I., Rasenberg, M., Pouw, W., Toni, T., Uhrig, P., Wilson, A., Holler, J., Özyürek, A., Fernández, R. (under review) ‘Leveraging Speech for Gesture Detection in Multimodal Communication’. ACM
  • Wilson, A., I. Pavlova, E. Payne, I. Burenko, P. Uhrig (2024). ‘World Futures through RT’s Eyes: Multimodal Dataset and Methodology’, Frontiers in Communication. Section: Multimodality of Communication, Volume 9. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2024.1356702
  • Wilson A., Wilkes, S., Teramoto, Y. and Hale, S. (2023). ‘Multimodal analysis of disinformation and misinformation’, Royal Society Open Science 10: 230964. 230964. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230964
  • Uhrig, P., Payne, E., Pavlova, I., Burenko, I., Dykes, N., Baltazani, M., Burrows, E., Hale, S., Torr, P., and Wilson, A. (2023). ‘Studying time conceptualisation via speech, prosody, and hand gesture: Interweaving manual and computational methods of analysis’, in W. Pouw, J. Trujillo, H. R. Bosker, L. Drijvers, M. Hoetjes, J. Holler, et al. (eds), Gesture and Speech in Interaction (GeSpIn) Conference. doi:10.17617/2.3527220.
  • Dykes, N., Wilson, A., Uhrig, P. (2023). ‘A Pipeline for the Creation of Multimodal Corpora from YouTube Videos’, Proceedings of Linguistic Insights from and for Multimodal Language Processing (LIMO 2023) at KONVENS, Ingolstadt. ACL Anthology.
  • Wilson, A. (2020). ‘It’s time to do news again’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 68.4 (Nov 2020): Special Issue: Multimodal Research in Linguistics, Guest Editor: Peter Uhrig, pp. 379–409
  • Steen, Francis, Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas, Anders Hougaard, Jungseock Joo, Inés Olza, Anna Pleshakova [Wilson], Soumya Ray, Peter Uhrig, Javier Valenzuela, Jacek Woźny, & Mark Turner (2018). ‘Toward an Infrastructure for Data­driven Multimodal Communication Research’, Linguistics Vanguard: A Multimodal Journal for the Language Sciences 4.1, article number 20170041.
  • Pleshakova [Wilson], A. (2016). ‘Meta-parody in contemporary Russian media: viewpoint blending behind Dmitry Bykov’s 2009 poem “Infectious”’, Lege Artis. Language yesterday, today, tomorrow 1.1: 202–274. https://lartis.sk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/PleshakovaLArt1.01.2016.pdf
  • Pleshakova [Wilson], A. (2014). ‘Strike, accident, risk, and counter-factuality: hidden meanings of the post-Soviet Russian News Discourse of the Nineties via Conceptual Blending’, Language and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language and Cognitive Science 6.3: 301–306.
  • Pleshakova [Wilson], A. and K.M. Quilan. (2013). ‘Toward a Theory of Interdisciplinarity: An Example of Conceptual Integration in Teaching and Learning in Area Studies’, Russian Language Journal. A Journal of the American Council of Teachers of Russian 63: 169–195.
  • Pleshakova [Wilson], A. (2009). ‘Cultural Networks’, (Commenting on Mark Turner’s essay on human singularity) published at On the Human. This contribution to the Forum of ‘On the Human’ at NC State University (a project of the National Humanities Center) was made in August 2009 following the personal invitation from Professor Gary Comstock, Editor-in-chief.

Book Chapters

  • Pleshakova [Wilson], A. (2018). ‘Cognitive Approaches: Media, Mind, and Culture’, in C. Cotter and D. Perrin (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Language and Media. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 77–93.
  • Pleshakova [Wilson], A. (2010). ‘Werewolves in Epaulettes’, in: F. Parril, V. Tobin, M. Turner (eds.). Meaning, Form, and Body. CSLI, Stanford: 263–286.

Books

  • Pleshakova [Wilson], A. and Yarskaya, E./ Плешакова, А.В., Ярская Е.Р. (2002). Английский язык в профессиональной подготовке специалиста по социальной работе [English for the Professional Training of Social Work Specialists]. Саратов: изд-во СГТУ. 127 pages; see Review Essay (2004) by Jacob Kornbeck & Malgorzata Laskowska in Social Work Education 23.2: 241–246]