Staff profile

Research

Virginia (she, her, lei, idda) is a qualitative researcher and linguist who specialises in Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics and works on Italian and English data. She holds a joint PhD in Linguistics and Human and Social Sciences at KU Leuven (Belgium) and Université de Neuchâtel (Switzerland). In her PhD thesis "Collaborative Grammar: the temporality and emergence of clause combination in Italian talk-in-interaction", she explored how collaborative clause combining relates to the sequential and temporal organization of turns in Italian talk-in-interaction. She looked at how the grammar of complex syntactical patterns emerges in multiperson interactions (in mundane and institutional settings, e.g., dinner parties and business meetings), through the practices of co-constructing and other-extending each others' turns. To describe these practices, she used the umbrella turn Collaborative Turns. She paid particular attention to the interplay of grammar and embodiment, especially the role of participants' gaze, to understand how people collaborate in everyday interaction.

In her MA thesis "Come faccio a capire me stesso?": questioni metodologiche sull'analisi della conversazione con schizofrenici (How can I understand myself? Methodological issues concerning conversation analysis and people with schizophrenia)" at Università di Torino (Italy) in 2017, she collected a corpus of semi-spontaneous interactions with people living with schizophrenia (in a nursing home for mental health treatment in Piemonte, Italy) and analysed the data deploying Conversation Analysis, revealing some methodological issues in the conceptualisation of psychotic speech as "deviant" from the norms of every-day interaction.

Between 2023-2024, she worked for the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at Oxford University as a specialist in data management and transcription (within the Conversation Analysis framework), broadening her knowledge of and pursuing qualitative research applied to healthcare interactions within the Health Behaviours Research Group.

Virginia joined the Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences in October 2024 as a Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the funded, award-winning project ‘Moving Social Work’ (MSW)(https://www.linkedin.com/company/moving-social-work). Working in partnership with Disability Rights UK, MSW is a co-produced programme of research that aims to embed physical activity advocacy with and for disabled people into the education, training, and routine practice of social workers. As part of this, MSW advances physical activity research on implementation science and knowledge translation, co-production, intersectionality, and multiagency working and integrated care. One of the aims of this project, on which Virginia takes the lead with a Conversation Analysis (CA) approach, is to help social workers navigate conversations around physical activity, movement and well-being with disabled people. Using CA, Virginia analyses naturally occurring conversations that social workers have with service users, and draws on practice-based evidence to design possible guidelines and advice on how to open up empowering conversations for everyone involved.

Find her here:

• Twitter: @cal_virgi
• Bluesky: @calvirgi.bsky.social
• Linkedin: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/virginiacalabria/en
• ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Virginia-Calabria
• AcademiaEdu: https://durham.academia.edu/DrVirginiaCalabria

Research interests

• Interactional Linguistics 
• Conversation Analysis
• Ethnomethodology
• Multimodality and Embodied Interactions
• Qualitative Research Methods
• Data collection, transcription, translation
• Applied Linguistics and Pragmatics
• Clinical and Medical Linguistics

Publications

• Ma, X., Calabria, V., Ma, W. & Zhang, S. (under review). Incorporating embodied conduct in the therapeutic interaction with autistic children as a way to effectively accomplish tasks. Health Communication.
• Calabria, V. & Sciubba, E. (forthcoming). ↑EH CAZZO (.) ADESSO BA:STA. Risorse linguistiche ed embodied per gestire la rabbia in una riunione di lavoro. La comunicazione parlata – Spoken Communication. Atti del Convegno GSCP2023, Roma 8-10/08/2023. Roma: Aracne.
• Calabria, V. (2025). Other-extensions in Italian. A case of and for Collaborative Grammar. In Steensig, J., Jørgensen, M., Lindström, J.K., Mikkelsen, N., Suomalainen, K. & Sørensen, S.S. (Eds.). Grammar in Action: Building comprehensive grammars of talk-in-interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 395-423.
• Calabria V. & De Stefani E. (2024). E anche-prefaced Other-expansions in Multi-person Interaction: On the Interrelationship of Syntax and Mutual Gaze. In Selting, M. & Barth-Weingarten, D. (Eds.). New Perspectives in Interactional Linguistic Research. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 162-186.
• Calabria V. & Savic., K. (2024). Aspetti multimodali nella costruzione di Turni Collaborativi: pratiche e risorse per manifestare un posizionamento epistemico condiviso. In Cirillo, L. & Nodari, R. (a cura di). Contesti, pratiche e risorse della comunicazione multimodale. Milano: Officinaventuno, 27-44.
• Sciubba, M.E. & Calabria, V. (2023). “You can’t curse”. Topicalizing and sanctioning swearing in interaction: A multimodal account. Bulletin Suisse de Linguistique Appliquée 117, 9-43.
• Calabria, V. (2023). Collaborative reported speech: co-constructing and other-extending quotes in Italian talk-in-interaction. Journal of Pragmatics 214, 1-17.
• Calabria, V. & Sciubba, M.E. (2022). “Adesso m’incazzo!”: swearwords as resources for managing negative emotions in interaction. mediAzioni, rivista online di studi interdisciplinari su lingue e culture 33, D4-28.
• Calabria, V. & De Stefani, E. (2020). Per una grammatica situata: aspetti temporali e multimodali dell’incrementazione sintattica. Studi Italiani di Linguistica Teorica ed Applicata 49 (3), 571-601.

Outreach and community commitment

Virginia is also interested in transcription and translation (for Italian, English, and French), research outreach, mental health, community making, and support for ECRs. She likes exploring how alternative ways of disseminating research can make our work more accessible to everyone (see for example Linguistweets: research in 6 tweets for Abralin - Brazilian Linguistics Association https://tinyurl.com/Linguistweets; and her forthcoming contribution to Inclusive Durham Festival 2025 with Kate Marks).

She is committed to academic citizenship and all matters concerning inclusivity and diversity. She is particularly devoted to making academia a fairer place, by giving voice to and empowering people in situations of power unbalance, underrepresented or under-resourced (being this ECRs, scholars from underrepresented communities, disabled scholars, or scholars identifying as part of the LGBTQI+ community). For this reason, in 2020 she founded the online ECR community CORE-ILCA (https://coreilca.wordpress.com/) and is a co-founder of the blog for ECRs Becoming a researcher (https://howtobecomearesearcher.wordpress.com/). She is also part of the inclusive UK-based ECQHRN (Early Career Qualitative Health Researchers Network) and of ISCA (The International Society for Conversation Analysis) Publications Committee (https://www.conversationanalysis.org/about-isca/committees/); for both these networks she also acts as a social media manager. Since January 2025, she is also part of the special interest group Conversation Analysis and Social Work.

Virginia (Virgi) is always happy to connect with new people and start enriching collaborations!