PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in supervising doctoral students working in literacy studies, including workplace literacies, audit cultures and accountability, digital literacy practices, literacy practices in religious communities, and adult literacy; linguistic ethnography; communities of practice and situated learning; institutional ethnography; and discourse analysis.

Current Teaching

In 2012/13 I am convening Ling401 'Research Methods in Linguistics and English Language' and Ling437 'Learning and Teaching in Digitally Mediated Spaces'.  I am also convening the Faculty Research Training Programme course FASS 517 'Discourse Analysis'.  In addition, I contribute teaching on Ling209 'Literacy and Education'. FASS 510 'Qualitative Methods' (face-to-face and distance versions), and the LAEL first year undergraduate Study Skills programme.

Research Interests

I am interested in the way contemporary social practices are almost always mediated in some way through interaction with written texts of many kinds, including electronic texts. My work studies various aspects of this textual mediation process, drawing on linguistic ethnographic methodologies to study literacy practices. At the moment I have a particular interest in workplace practices, paperwork demands, and the impact of these on people's lives and identities. I have recently completed an ESRC-funded project entitled 'Paperwork and pressure in educational settings: the textual mediation of target culture'. This involved using ethnographic methods to explore the impact of centralised paperwork demands on people's working lives in two contrasting educational settings: an early years site and an adult education college.

Previously, I was a member of research teams working on the Adult Learners' Lives project, an ethnographic study of the relationship between learning and other aspects of people's lives; the Kendal project, a study using multiple qualitative methods to explore trends and shifts in religious and spiritual belief and practice in the town of Kendal in the Lake District; and the Interculture Project, a study of undergraduates' intercultural experiences during their period of residence abroad. My doctoral research, conducted in the Linguistics and English Language department, examined the role of written text in constructing and maintaining community identity in a Catholic parish.

I have published on extending the concept of communities of practice, models of adult learning, creativity in everyday literacy practices, community-based local literacies research, time and the new literacy studies, the legitimation of cultural generalisations through appeal to personal experience, and French text analysis.

I am active nationally in the Research and Practice in Adult Literacy network and am a founder member of the UK Linguistic Ethnography Forum.  I am a member of the ESRC's Peer Review College.

• Adults learning new forms of writing

  01/01/2010 → 30/03/2010
  An interview study looking at how adults learn new writing practices at times of transition in their lives. ... Read more»

• Paperwork and pressure in educational workplaces

  01/04/2007 → 30/09/2009
  A study of the impact of paperwork practices in two contrasting educational workplaces, an early years centre and an adult education college. ... Read more»

• Adult Learners' Lives

  01/09/2003 → 31/03/2005
  Adult Learners' Lives was a major project funded by the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy. The aim was to understand the connections between adults' lives and ba ... Read more»

• Karin Tusting presents in Paris on "Literacy studies: une approche ethnographique"

  08/09/2011
  On 8-9 September 2011, Karin Tusting from the Literacy Research Centre will be the invited European opening speaker at the conference "Tracer / auditer les denrées alimentaires" (Tracing and auditing ... Read more»

• Amy Burgess and Karin Tusting present at RaPAL 2010 using Skype

  16/07/2010
  Dr Amy Burgess (Exeter / Lancaster) and Dr Karin Tusting (Literacy Research Centre, Lancaster) presented a paper at the 2010 Research and Practice in Adult Literacy conference, "Multiliteracies: Chang ... Read more»

• Literacy, Lives and Learning book launch

  21/11/2007
  A book launch was held on Tuesday 20th November to celebrate the publication of Literacy, Lives and Learning by members of the Literacy Research Centre, David Barton, Roz Ivanic, Yvon Appleby, Rachel ... Read more»

• New Literacy Research Centre publication

  06/11/2007
  Tusting, K. and Maybin, J. (2007) "Linguistic ethnography and interdisciplinarity: opening the discussion', a special issue of the Journal of Sociolinguistics 11(5). ... Read more»