Polina is a sociolinguist who employs discourse analytic, ethnographic, and multimodal approaches to investigate aspects of healthcare interaction. She is the Lead Researcher on the Response Study, a large-scale mixed-methods evaluation of the National Health Service (NHS) patient safety framework. Her research spans medical sociology, sociolinguistics, interactional studies, and healthcare policy, reflecting a multidisciplinary approach. Before joining York, she completed a PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick and worked as a Research Assistant and a Project Officer.
At the University of York, Polina supervises MPH students and mentors PhD candidates. She has also taught Sociolinguistics, Forensic Linguistics, and Cognitive Psychology as an Associate Lecturer at York St John University and Mediterranean College.
Polina conducts qualitative research on various aspects of workplace/healthcare communication, with a special interest in intra-team interactions in emergencies, patient safety, and the management of chronic diseases. She primarily employs multi-method, ethnographic designs and multimodal lenses.