Media ready expert
Dr Alessia Tranchese
Summary
I am Associate Professor of Language, Feminism and Digital Media. My research examines how language and media shape public understandings of male violence against women, combining corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, feminist theory, and computational and AI-driven methods for digital media analysis. My recent projects, supported by the Centre for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) and Google Cloud, investigate pornography, online misogyny, and sex education. I am the author of From Fritzl to #MeToo: Twelve years of rape coverage in the British press, which explores the social implications of rape myths in media representations of sexual violence. My work has been published in leading journals on topics including incels, user-generated reviews in the sex trade, and AI bias in content moderation. I am a regular contributor to national and international media, spanning broadcast, broadsheet, and popular press, and have provided expert commentary for outlets including the BBC, Channel 4, The Guardian, The Observer, Metro, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, France 24 and Glamour. I serve on the advisory board of the Journal of Language and Discrimination and have provided expert consultancy for competitive funding panels including Horizon Europe, and for international organisations including the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, the European Commission, and Ofcom. I have also collaborated with non-academic organisations, including DEMOS and Full Fact, to inform practical strategies for tackling male violence against women. I have delivered invited talks for women's rights organisations including the End Violence Against Women Coalition and the Women's Support Project. My research has informed policy and practice at multiple levels, including delivering school training on online misogyny.Research interests
- Corpus-based discourse analysis
- Sociolinguistics
- Media representations of violence against women
- Online misogyny
- Language and gender
- Pornography studies
- Gender and sexuality
- Sex education
- AI-based text and image analysis
- Content moderation
- Technology-facilitated violence against women
- Image-based sexual violence
Teaching responsibilities
I coordinate and teach the following modules:
Language, gender and sexuality
Analysing language in social contexts
Language and social media
PhD Research Supervision
I'm open to supervising students in the field of violence against women, media and language, pornography, and online misogyny.
Media availability
I'm happy to take calls and emails from the media on my research. Please contact me by email at alessia.tranchese@port.ac.uk or by phone on +44 (0)23 9284 6044.
Research outputs
2025
Leveraging advanced NLP techniques and data augmentation to enhance online misogyny detection
Mohasseb, A., Amer, E., Chiroma, F. M., Tranchese, A.
16 Jan 2025, In: Applied Sciences. 15, 2, 23p., 856
Research output: Article
2024
"Like shagging a dead fish": misogyny and consent in online sex buyers' reviews
Tranchese, A.
25 Nov 2024, In: Feminist Media Studies
Research output: Article
2023
Why we need to talk about porn when we talk about Andrew Tate
Tranchese, A.
28 Apr 2023, In: The Conversation
Research output: Article
From Fritzl to #Metoo: Twelve Years of Rape Coverage in the British Press
Tranchese, A.
31 Mar 2023,
Research output: Book
2020
Rape victims and the law: victim-blaming and victimisation in reports of rape in the British press
Tranchese, A.
16 Apr 2020,
Research output: Chapter (peer-reviewed)