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Alexandra Georgakopoulou
Professor of Discourse Analysis & Sociolinguistics
Biography
Alexandra is a discourse analyst with a focus on the role of communication in how ordinary people present themselves and relate to others in significant socialization contexts (e.g. family, friendship groups, school, leisure sites, social media platforms). She has specifically examined the role of everyday life stories in the (re)formation of social relations and in (post)feminist and youth identity politics. This work has led to the development of small stories research, a paradigm for studying identities through narrative. She has published 12 books which include:
- Small stories, interaction and identity, 2007, John Benjamins.
- Analyzing narrative with Anna De Fina, 2012, CUP.
- The Handbook of Narrative Analysis, co-edited with Anna De Fina, 2015, Wiley-Blackwell.
- The Routledge Handbook of Language & Digital Communication, co-edited with Tereza Spilioti, 2016.
Her latest publications include:
- Quantified storytelling: A narrative analysis of metrics on social media (2020, with Stefan Iversen & Carsten Stage, Palgrave).
- The Cambridge Handbook of Discourse Studies (2020; co-edited with Anna De Fina, Cambridge University Press).
- Tales, tellings & tellers across contexts (2023; ed. by Georgakopoulou, A. Giaxoglou, K. & Patron, S.). London/NY: Routledge
- Influencer Discourse: Affective relations & identities (2024, ed. by Blitvitch, P. & Georgakopoulou, A.). John Benjamins.
Alexandra is (co)-Lead of the Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication and Chair of the School's PaRC (Postgraduate Research Committee).
Alexandra is (Co)-Editor of the Routledge Book Series Research in Narrative, interaction and discourse.
Research interests
Alexandra's research interests include:
- Discourse and narrative analysis, small stories research
- Discourse, social interaction, culture and identities
- Youth and gender in communication
- Social media communication: Sharing small stories online
- Critical discourse analysis of the media ‘curation’ of stories
- Self-presentation, popular subjects and Influencers on social media
- The social mediatization of the Eurozone and the Greek financial crisis
- Modern Greek language, discourse and culture
Teaching
Alexandra teaches on the following modules:
- Analysing stories and identities
- Language, discourse and social media
- Language, identity and culture
- Language politics: (Post)-national and global contexts
PhD supervision
Alexandra is happy to supervise topics on the broad spectrum of:
- Discourse, narrative and identities analysis
- Language, society and culture
- Social media communication
She has experience in a broad range of methodologies, e.g. narrative analysis, social interactional/conversation analysis, research interviews, computer-mediated discourse analysis, (digital) ethnography, corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis. Specific current interests include working with small stories research on social media, especially Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Alexandra has supervised circa 50 PhD students and numerous visiting PhD students, working on a wide range of languages (e.g. Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Japanese, Spanish etc.), cultures and materials within discourse, narrative analysis, sociolinguistics, and social media communication.
Her current PhD students and their topics are:
- Maxine Ali - Authenticating wellness: A discourse-analytic study of influencer-healers’ self-presentation practices on Instagram
- Yanlu Cheng - The role of emotion discourse in the self-referential construction of national identity on Chinese microblogging platform.
- Laura Sae Miyake Mark - Being 'hafu' on/offline: A multi-sited ethnographic study of mixed-Japanese identities.
- Donghao Ouyang - International students in transnational migration: Chronotopic conditionings of identities in narratives and in digital interactions
- Christos Sagredos - A small stories approach to sex workers' identity constructions in digital environments.
- Wei Wei - Beauty and young female identities on social media in China: a small stories approach to the construction of beauty on Xiaohongshu.
- Zijun Xu - Chinese migrant mothers living in UK: identities negotiation on WeChat groups through small stories
Further details
For further details please see Alexandra's Research Staff Profile.
Research
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Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication (LDC)
The Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication is a major centre for descriptive linguistics, applied linguistics and language in education.
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Ego Media
.Ego-Media , a 5-year ERC-funded Advanced Grant project on the impact of new media on self presentation, ran from 2014-19
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Centre for Digital Culture
The Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College London is an interdisciplinary research centre promoting research and debate on digital culture
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KingsCAT: Capture and Analysis Tool for Social Media Research at King’s College London
KingsCAT is an instance of the open source 4CAT: Capture and Analysis Toolkit set up to support interdisciplinary and collaborative social media research.
Project status: Ongoing
Research
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Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication (LDC)
The Centre for Language, Discourse & Communication is a major centre for descriptive linguistics, applied linguistics and language in education.

Ego Media
.Ego-Media , a 5-year ERC-funded Advanced Grant project on the impact of new media on self presentation, ran from 2014-19

Centre for Digital Culture
The Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College London is an interdisciplinary research centre promoting research and debate on digital culture

KingsCAT: Capture and Analysis Tool for Social Media Research at King’s College London
KingsCAT is an instance of the open source 4CAT: Capture and Analysis Toolkit set up to support interdisciplinary and collaborative social media research.
Project status: Ongoing