Emma is Senior Lecturer in Language and Social Interaction in the Communication and Media department in the School of Social Science and Humanities.
Emma’s research is committed to understanding, and improving, how gender-based violence is reported to the police and progresses through the criminal justice system in England and Wales. She also has an interest in the quality of ‘evidence’ produced for, and used within, the legal system.
Emma completed her PhD here at Loughborough in 2014 and was a Research Associate at University of Liverpool, Manchester and Leicester University before returning to Loughborough in 2022 from the Aston Institute of Forensic Linguistics, Aston University where she remains as Visiting Research Fellow.
Emma’s research interests centre on improving access to criminal justice for 'vulnerable' and/or ‘intimidated’ (as defined by law) victims and witnesses of crimes such as kidnap, domestic violence, rape and serious sexual offences. She uses conversation analysis (CA) to examine how these crimes are reported and progressed through the criminal justice system in England and Wales. Emma works with naturalistic data of emergency calls and investigative police interviews. She asks questions such as, how are written and training and guidance documents enacted in practice?
Emma co-convenes ‘Forensic Conversations’ an annual symposium held in September at Loughborough University and online. The symposium brings together academics globally who use ethnomethodology, to research broadly criminal justice settings.
Emma is a member of the Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG), a group of staff and postgraduate students, who share their interests in the use of language in everyday settings, researching both its foundations and its applications to real-world problems.
Emma’s teaches undergraduate courses in the School of Social Science and Humanities and supervises postgraduate dissertations. She also teaches at undergraduate level in Psychology in the School of Sports, Exercise and Health sciences and supervises undergraduate dissertations. She is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Emma also contributes to a programme of workshops offered by the Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG). Including:
- Kathryn Jordin- ‘Learning To Be A Boy - How everyday conversation teaches and upholds heteronormative gender constraints to boys’ withDr Marco Pino and Dr Laura Jenkins
Kathryn's doctoral research uses conversation analysis to explore how interaction between pre-school age boys and adults teaches and upholds heteronormative gender constraints.
- Jixin Chen- 'Agency, Self-Expressions and Representations of the LGBTQ+ Community in Chinese Social Media' with Dr Iris Wigger and Prof Surya Monro
Jixin's doctoral research explores how sexual minorities in China use social media for self-expression and public attitudes and perceptions towards them.
- Nicola Vejelis– ‘Bias in Rape and Serious Sexual Assault (RASSO) cases’ with Dr Kirsty McGregor
Nicola’s doctoral research explores how basis impacts Rape and Serious Sexual Assault (RASSO) cases in an end to end (initial disclosure to court outcome) review.
Emma is currently editing a two-volume collection titled, ‘Analysing Conversations in Forensic Settings’ for the Palgrave Studies in Discursive Psychology series with Dr Laura Jenkins. The books are expected to be published in late 2026.
Gender-based violence
- Richardson, E., Heini, A., Jenkins, L., & Stokoe, E. (2025). How ‘vulnerability’ manifests as an interactional asymmetry in police interviews with suspects and intellectually impaired witnesses.Symbolic Interaction. ISSN 0195-6086.
- Richardson, E., Jenkins, L., & Willmott, D. (2025). Rape myths, jury deliberations, and conversation analysis: Examining conversational practices used to undermine rape complainants within (mock) jury deliberations.Journal of Criminal Justice, 99, 102461.
- Tennent, E., & Richardson, E. (2025). Domestic violence and the spatial-moral order of home in calls to police.Journal of Criminal Psychology, 15(7), 31–45.
- Richardson, E., Alexander, M., & Stokoe, E. (2024). The role of alcohol in initial help-seeking telephone calls about domestic violence to the police. Violence Against Women, 31(10) 2526–2552.
- Stokoe, E. & Richardson, E. (2023). Asking for help without asking for help: How victims request and police offer assistance in cases of domestic violence when perpetrators are potentially co-present. Discourse Studies, 25(3), 383-408.
- Richardson, E., Stokoe, E., & Antaki, C. (2019). Establishing intellectually impaired victims’ understanding about ‘truth’ and ‘lies’: Police interview guidance and practice in cases of sexual assault. Applied Linguistics, 40(5), 773–792.
- Antaki, C., Richardson, E., Stokoe, E., & Willott, S. (2015). Can people with intellectual disability resist implications of fault when police question their allegations of sexual assault and rape?American Journal on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, 53(5), 346-357.
- Antaki, C., Richardson, E., Stokoe, E., & Willott, S. (2015). Dealing with the distress of people with intellectual disabilities reporting sexual assault and rape. Discourse Studies, 17(4), 415-432.
- Antaki, C., Richardson, E., Stokoe, E., & Willott, S. (2015). Police interviews with vulnerable people alleging sexual assault: Probing inconsistency and questioning conduct. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19(3), 328-350.