Rate My Professor Thora Tenbrink

Thora Tenbrink is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Arts, Culture and Language at Bangor University, where she also serves as Director of Postgraduate Research Studies in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. She is the founder and Director of the Places of Climate Change Research Centre (PloCC) and co-leads the Wales-wide WISERD network on Place-based Approaches to Climate Change (PATCCh). Tenbrink earned her DPhil from the University of Bremen in 2005, with a thesis on Localising objects and events: Discoursal applicability conditions for spatiotemporal expressions in English and German. She joined Bangor University in 2012 as a specialist in cognitive linguistics and has progressed to her current professorial appointment. Her work promotes interdisciplinary and international collaboration in cognitive and social sciences, including involvement in the SellSTEM international research network aimed at enhancing spatial ability in STEM fields.

Tenbrink's primary research focus is Cognitive Discourse Analysis (CODA), an empirical method she developed to access cognitive representations and processes through language data, as outlined in her book Cognitive Discourse Analysis: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Her earlier research examined spatial environments, including reference frames, navigation decisions, and wayfinding, detailed in Space, Time, and the Use of Language (Mouton de Gruyter, 2007). Recent studies apply CODA to place attachment, climate change perceptions, and threats, with key publications such as Place attachment and perception of climate change as a threat (PLoS ONE, 2023), Cognitive Discourse Analysis: accessing cognitive representations and processes through language data (Language and Cognition, 2015), and chapters in the Handbook of Cognitive Semantics (2023) and Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics (2017). She has authored over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and co-edited three books on linguistic representation and dialogue, alongside editing special issues and conference proceedings. A Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales since 2022, Tenbrink leads funded projects like SellSTEM (EU Horizon 2020), Rural Wales Local Policy and Innovation Partnership, and community mapping for green transitions on Anglesey. She supervises PhD students in cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis, delivers invited keynotes and public lectures on spatial thinking, climate communication, and water safety, and contributes to policy on environmental concerns and UN Sustainable Development Goals including climate action.