Claire Hardaker (linguist)

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Claire Hardaker (born 16 January 1981) is a British linguist and professor in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom. Her work spans forensic linguistics and corpus linguistics, focusing on deceptive, manipulative, and aggressive language found online. She has studied trolling, disinformation, human trafficking, and online scams, using corpus methods to support analyses in forensic contexts.

Education and career: Hardaker earned an MA in Language Studies in 2007 and a PhD in Linguistics in 2012 from Lancaster University. She taught English Language and Linguistics at the University of Central Lancashire from 2007 to 2012. In 2013 she joined Lancaster University as a lecturer in Forensic Corpus Linguistics and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2017.

Research funding and projects: She has been a principal investigator and co-investigator on ESRC grants as part of the Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences (CASS), a £5 million program exploring online abuse, its motivations, strategies, and responses. She has also led or contributed to government-funded and European Commission projects on anti-trafficking.

Public engagement and tools: Hardaker has appeared on television, radio, documentaries, podcasts, and print media worldwide, discussing online abuse and language topics. She writes for outlets such as The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, and The Conversation, among others, and her work has been cited in the House of Commons. She serves on the editorial board of Internet Pragmatics, directs the Forensic Linguistics Research Group (FORGE) at Lancaster, and co-created FireAnt, free software to collect and filter Twitter data. She hosts a monthly podcast, en clair, about forensic linguistics and language mysteries.

Personal background: She was born in Dewsbury and grew up in Tyersal, Bradford. Hardaker attended Tong High School and Bradford College for her A levels.