Professor Alexandra Georgakopoulou is a world-renowned authority in the field of discourse and narrative analysis. In her work, she focuses on the role of communication in how ordinary people present themselves and relate to others in significant socialisation contexts (e.g. family, friendship groups, school, leisure sites, social media platforms). Her work has led to the development of research into so-called "small stories', that is, short, fragmentary accounts of everyday life that play a key role in the construction of identity, social relationships and communicative practices. This approach has introduced new methodologies for analysing narrative: narrative as interaction, rather than merely as text. Professor Georgakopoulou's work on "small stories' has been discussed and cited by leading scholars in the fields of sociolinguistics and narrative studies (including Jerome Bruner and William Labov) and has been translated into numerous languages (e.g. Chinese and Japanese). The "small stories' paradigm is currently applied not only in sociolinguistics, but also in narrative psychology, as well as in research on education, migration, health, ageing and other fields.
In the context of the growing role of digital media and social media, Professor Georgakopoulou has contributed to our understanding of how storytelling is changing - how "small stories' are created and circulated, and how the mechanisms of self-presentation, authenticity and identity operate in the digital age. Professor Georgakopoulou has engaged in two prestigious grant programmes: 2014-2019 Ego-media: The impact of new media on forms and practices of self-presentation (approx. 2,500,000 euro). Grant ERC Advanced (in collaboration with Max Saunders - PI, Clare Brant and Leone Ridsdale, King's College London), 2005-2008 Urban Classroom Culture and Interaction (UCCI). The ESRC Identities & Social Action programme (in collaboration with Ben Rampton (project lead), Roxy Harris, Constant Leung, Caroline Dover and Lauren Small, King's College London). Professor Alexandra Georgakopoulou has been a keynote speaker at over 25 international conferences (including Narrative Matters 2012; the International Pragmatics Association Conference 2013, which has around 1,500 members across six continents; the Centre for the Study of Literacies, Sheffield 2016; Personal Narratives Online, Bayreuth 2015; EPICS VII: Pragmatics and New Technologies, Seville 2016; Narrative Criminology, Bielefeld 2018). She has served as a discussant and panellist in over 20 plenary sessions and invited panels at prestigious international conferences (e.g. AILA, IPrA, Georgetown University Round Table, I-mean and the Sociolinguistics Symposium) and has delivered around 150 lectures in 22 countries, including workshops on narrative analysis, masterclasses and doctoral summer schools (including in Canada, Denmark, China, France, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, Mexico, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and the USA).
She also has a track record of serving in expert and evaluation roles at international level, having acted as chief assessor in Greece for the Humanities Research Programmes and Grants under the Ministry of Education and for the Hellenic Quality Assurance for Greek Universities, as well as having assessed grant applications in countries such as Portugal, Denmark, Finland and Belgium. Furthermore, she has served as an external examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in modern languages, linguistics, translation and narrative at eight universities in the UK, including the University of Oxford, and has served as a reviewer and committee member in over 20 competitions for professorial posts in the UK, France, Greece and the USA.
