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Big Screens, Bigger Data: Reflections on a Lecture Trip to China
November 2025 marked another exciting visit to China, showcasing the work of CASS, including a brand new version of #LancsBox X with a Chinese UI, which will be released in 2026. If there were one metaphor to capture the essence of the trip, it would be this: the screens keep getting bigger. Compared to previous…
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Exploring New Horizons in Corpus Linguistics: Lectures, Workshops and Partnerships in Shanghai
At the end of October 2024, I had the privilege of visiting Shanghai and Suzhou. This trip was more than just a visit—it was an inspiring journey through the vibrant academic and research landscape of corpus linguistics in Eastern China. I had the chance to engage with leading research institutions such as Shanghai Jiao Tong…
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CASS’s innovation programme: New features in #LancsBox X
CASS is committed to advancing corpus linguistics through innovation. We actively seek opportunities to pioneer new techniques in corpus analysis and apply them across social science and the digital humanities. This effort is underpinned by our theoretical research (e.g. McEnery & Brezina, 2022) and practical expertise gained through our extensive portfolio of research projects. #LancsBox…
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Language Data Analysis training: live from Lancaster Castle
On 22 September 2023, CASS organised a training and outreach event “Language Data Analysis for Business and Professional Communication”. It was live streamed from the historical building of Lancaster Castle and was attended by over 500 participants (20 on site and the rest online) from both the industry and academia. The recording of the event…
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#LancsBox X: Innovation in corpus linguistics
CASS has always been associated with innovation in corpus linguistics. Innovation comes in different forms and guises such as the creation new corpora and tools as well as novel applications of corpus methods in a wide range of areas of social and linguistic research. With increasing demands on the sophistication of corpus linguistic analyses comes…
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‘Location, location, location’: Introducing corpus linguistics in a novel and interesting way
“Lancaster University is one of the places where corpus linguistics was born. Let’s travel back in time to the year 1970, six years after Lancaster University was founded…” This is a quote from the beginning of the first lecture of a new online Masters programme in Corpus linguistics, which invites the students to embark on…
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Time to Celebrate: Trinity Lancaster Corpus
On Wednesday 30 October, The ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches (CASS) organised a small get-together in its new location, Bailrigg House, to celebrate the research that is being carried out at the centre. Specifically, on this occasion, we wanted to highlight the Trinity Lancaster Corpus, a corpus of spoken learner English built in collaboration between…
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Statistics in (Higher) Education: A few thoughts at the beginning of the new academic year
As every year around this time, university campuses are buzzing with students who are starting their studies or returning to the campus after the summer break – this incredible transformation pours life into buildings – empty spaces become lecture theatres, seminar rooms and labs. Students have the opportunity to learn many new things about the subject…
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British National Corpus 2014: A sociolinguistic book is out
Have you ever wondered what real spoken English looks like? Have you ever asked the question of whether people from different backgrounds (based on gender, age, social class etc.) use language differently? Have you ever thought it would be interesting to investigate how much English has changed over the last twenty years? All these questions…
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Learn about the BNC2014, scan a book sample and contribute to the corpus…
On Saturday 12 May 2018, CASS hosted a small training event at Lancaster University for a group of participants, who came from different universities in the UK. We talked about the BNC2014 project and discussed both the theoretical underpinnings as well as the practicalities of corpus design and compilation. Slides from the event are available…
CASS Briefings
CASS: Briefings is a series of short, quick reads on the work being done at the ESRC/CASS research centre at Lancaster University, UK.