A tribute to Peter French on the occasion of his retirement from his role as founding editor of the Journal

Author Biographies

• Malcolm Coulthard, Aston Centre for Forensic Linguistics

  Malcolm Coulthard is Emeritus Professor of Forensic Linguistics at the University of Aston. He was Foundation President of the International Association of Forensic Linguists, founding Director of the Aston Centre for Forensic Linguistics and founding co-editor of the discipline’s two main journals, the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law and Language and Law – Linguagem e Direito. Recent co-authored publications include: The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics, 2021 and An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence, 2017.

• James Tompkinson, Aston Centre for Forensic Linguistics

  James Tompkinson is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Spoken Interaction in Legal Contexts (SILC) within the Aston Institute for Forensic Linguistics. His research focuses on topics which are relevant to both forensic phonetics and forensic linguistics. These include transcription, speaker comparison methods, regional variation in English dialects, perceptual judgements based on speech information, and spoken and written threats.