Meta-essay
On October 2nd 2026 I was invited to give a talk for TEDx Aston University. It was fantastic to be asked and just the right amount of terrifying. Even as someone who is fairly used to public speaking, I got a little freaked. The TED format is quite unusual as both a genre and in its length, and I…
User Centred Explanation Design in AI produced forensic evidence
This post was first published on the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics blog 27 November 2025 In 1986 Donald Norman and Stephen Draper published the influential edited volume User Centred System Design, a collection of essays that set the agenda for software development and the field of Human-Computer Interaction throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first…
On the inadequacy of justice
Today I’m on holiday and today this story broke – Bernadette Walker: Scott Walker guilty of murder – BBC News. And this is a fuller version from the Peterborough Telegraph. I knew the verdict was coming, I hoped it was coming, and yet it’s been getting me down. Once again a man has abused and…
Did AC12 hire a bent forensic linguist?
The big reveal in the season finale of Line of Duty was that it was a forensic linguist, who identified ‘H’ aka “the Fourth man” not as some criminal mastermind, but as the bumbling and over-promoted DI Ian Buckells. The TV police drama has followed the incremental investigations of anti-corruption unit AC12 of the fictional Central Police. Over the…
Tim Grant – Forensic Linguist
I am Professor of Forensic Linguistics and Director of the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics. I am an academic practitioner and a practitioner academic in the field of forensic linguistics. I am an experienced academic, skilled in teaching, productive in research and engaged in a range of administrative roles. I have attracted research income in…
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