Research

Papers:

In review
(With Akila Kadambi, Sofronia Ringold, Srini Narayanan, Antonio Damasio, Jonas Kaplan & Lisa Aziz-Zadeh)  A neural basis for rebelonging
(With Ethan O. Nadler, Douglas Guilbeault, Sofronia M. Ringold, Antoine Bellemare-Pepin, Iulia M. Comșa, Karim Jerbi, Srini Narayanan & Lisa Aziz-Zadeh) Statistical or Embodied? Comparing Colorseeing, Colorblind, Painters, and Large Language Models in their Processing of Color Metaphors

Accepted in principle
Observational evidence of facilitative, non-communicative gestures. Brain and Language. Special collection: Gesture, Cognition and Language.
Evidence for a new kind of pragmatics gesture from naturalistic observation: the ToM gesture. Brain and Language. Special collection: Gesture, Cognition and Language.
(With Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, Ethan O. Nadler, Akila Kadambi, Benjamin Miller-Mills, Sofronia Ringold & Ylenia D'Elia) Embodied Semantics: Sensorimotor Contributions to Conceptual Representations. Bridging the Embodied Mind: Exploring Objectives, Methodologies, and Foundations of Embodied Cognition.  

Preprints and unfinished projects
(from 2024) Elementalism: A Cognitive Neuroscience Framework for Neurosurgical Language Testing. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4991051 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4991051.
(from 2023) Testing metalinguistic function in the cerebellum: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13KMHN5PC6SpSvWRP_1gRv0-8uCVq9X9_/view?usp=drive_link 

2025
(With Sonia Mariotti, Neil Barua, Hajira Mumtaz, and Anna Piasecki) Language testing in awake craniotomy for brain tumor resection: A survey of current practice in the United Kingdom. Neuro-Oncology Practice, 2025; npaf027, https://doi.org/10.1093/nop/npaf027.
(With Frances Dowle) Future Areas for Postgraduate Research in Linguistics: A Survey of Subfields' Pressing Issues According to Academics [White paper]. Linguistics Association of Great Britain Postgraduate Student Committee. https://www.lagbpsc.co.uk/resources/future-areas-for-postgraduate-research-in-linguistics.  

2024
(With Neil Barua, Lydia Wiernik, Hajira Mumtaz, Sonia Mariotti, Madeleine Farrow, Raenette David & Anna E. Piasecki) Awake craniotomy with English and British Sign Language mapping in a patient with a left temporal glioblastoma reveals discordant speech-sign language maps. Acta Neurochirurgica. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00701-024-06130-x  
Overhauling research commercialisation at UK universities. Perspectives: Policy and Practice in Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603108.2024.2351798

2022
Embodiment Effects in Idiom Processing. Cambridge Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 14(1), pp. 180-199, https://www.mmll.cam.ac.uk/files/copil_14a_6_williamson.pdf 

2021
(with Napoleon Katsos, Ema Banerjee, Yin Jue Chang, Thomas Hikaru Clark, Joe Cowan, & Zuzanna Witkowska) Review of Experimental Pragmatics: The Making of a Cognitive Science by Ira Noveck. Journal of Pragmatics, 185, pp. 108-112, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.09.006.
The Graded Co-Salience Hypothesis for Polysemous Ambiguity. Journal of the Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain, 1(1), pp. 57-77, https://www.ulab.org.uk/journal/volumes/1/issues/1/articles/3 

2019
Is Arbitrariness a Design-Feature of the Sign? Proceedings of the Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain Conference IX, pp. 228-259, https://zenodo.org/record/3432350#.Yo4pWKjMLTA 

Presentations:

2025
(with Kris Kinsey and Anna Piasecki) Making and Breaking the Gesture Bubble: An Experimental Account of Why We Gesture from a Naturalistic Corpus of 8,000 Gestures. Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. July 9-11, 2025.
(invited) Greater demands and better maps: Exploring the testing of multiple linguistic modalities in awake craniotomy. UWE Bristol and TJBCM Awake Craniotomy Symposium, University of the West of England, Bristol. May 23, 2025.
(invited) Awake craniotomy with English and British sign language mapping in a patient with a left temporal glioblastoma reveals discordant speech-sign language maps. Neuro- and Psycholinguistics Tutorial, Structures Formelles du Langage laboratory, CNRS & Université Paris 8, Paris, France. June 2, 2025. 

2024
(with Agustín Ibáñez) A neuroscientific model of the entropy of qualia for semantics and consciousness. Society for the Neurobiology of Language 2024. Brisbane, Australia. October 24-26, 2024.
Elementalism: a clinical framework for testing the neurobiology of language. Society for the Neurobiology of Language 2024. Brisbane, Australia. October 24-26, 2024.
(with Anna Piasecki, Sonia Mariotti, and Hajira Mumtaz) Towards more inclusive language testing in the operating theatre. iMean 7, University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. June 19-21, 2024.
(with Sonia Mariotti and Hajira Mumtaz) The State of Affairs in Neurosurgical Language Testing. School of Social Sciences Student Conference 2024, University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. May 24, 2024.
Overhauling Research Commercialisation at UK Universities: The Case of Language Testing. British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes (BALEAP)  Professional Issue Meeting: Collaboration, Power, and Influence, King's College London, London, United Kingdom. March 16 2024. 
(with Sonia Mariotti and Hajira Mumtaz) Intraoperative Language Testing at the Brain, Language, and Behaviour Laboratory. MShed, School of Arts Showcase, University of the West of England, Bristol, United Kingdom. January 24, 2024. 

2023
(with Anna Piasecki) Assessing Individuals’ Embodied Linguistic Gestures. Embodied and Situated Language Processing Conference 2023, Messina, Sicily, Italy. September 29-30, 2023.

2022
Hand-Action Meanings Facilitate Idiom Processing in Phrasal and Sentential Contexts. Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Embodiment and Relativity, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. October  7-9, 2022.
The Graded Co-Salience Hypothesis for Polysemous Ambiguity. 12th Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain Conference, University of Edinburgh, UK. April 9-11, 2022.

2021
The Graded Co-Salience Hypothesis for Polysemous Ambiguity. 17th International Pragmatics Association Conference, Winterthur, Switzerland. June 27-July 2, 2021.
Rayo’s Common Sense in Polysemy. 11th Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain Conference, University of Aberdeen, UK. April 16-18, 2021.
Words, Wurds, and Werdz: How to Select Lexical Stimuli for Psycholinguistic Experiments and A Journey of Increasing Reliability in Embodied Semantics. Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics MPhil Oral Presentations, University of Cambridge, UK. March 18, 2021.
The Quarks of Meaning: Embodied Semantic Content. Lent Term Pecha-Kucha, Girton College, University of Cambridge, UK. February 2, 2021.

2020
The Quarks of Language. Words With Friends, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA. November 20, 2020.
Can ‘The Grab Bag’ Stand Up? An Empirical Analysis of Rayo’s Semantic Ontology. 10th Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain Conference, Edinburgh, UK. (cancelled)

2019
Is Arbitrariness a Design Feature of the Sign? 9th Undergraduate Linguistics Association of Britain Conference, Queen Mary University of London, UK. April 11-13, 2019.
(with Ben Crumpton) Wittgenstein: Language and Mind. Lancaster University Philosophy Society, Lancaster, UK. March 13, 2019.