Kerri-Ann Butcher

Kerri’s main research interests include the phonetics-phonology interface and sociolinguistics, with a focus on sound and language change across time and space, drawing on methods and theory from sociology, spatial statistics and geography. She is particularly interested in conducting spatial analyses of language data that concern dialect transmission and the adoption/retention of linguistic variants by mobile speakers in England. Her work in acoustic phonetics applies instrumental and experimental approaches to understanding the links between speech perception and production – both in terms of social meaning and the raw speech signal – and how phonetic and/or individual variation might influence sound change.

In April 2025, Kerri was awarded an ESRC New Investigator Grant to undertake a three-year research project: “A Real-Time Approach to Understanding Language Variation and Change: The Social Variation of English in Norwich Revisited”. The project tracks language change over a time span of 60 years, elucidating in real time the underlying mechanisms and dynamics of the dialect levelling process, while addressing the fundamental – yet vexed – question of whether the individual’s grammar can change over the lifespan. Kerri is also collaborating with Professor Bert Vaux to produce the first data-driven Atlas of World Englishes. The project combines recent advances in online crowdsourcing, geospatial data visualisation, dialectometry, and statistical physics with a view to better understanding linguistic macrovariation, microvariation, and nanovariation in the English-speaking world today.

Kerri is a Lecturer in English Language at the University of Leeds and is also an affiliated member of the Phonetics Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. A King’s College alumna (PhD, Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, 2022), she served as a College Research Associate at King’s between 2023-2025 while undertaking research on language change in post-industrial coastal communities as part of an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge.