Polina Mesinioti
Research Fellow

Profile

Biography

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.

Qualifications

• BA Linguistics (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
• MA Theoretical Linguistics (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
• PGC Social Sciences (University of Warwick)
• PhD Applied Linguistics (University of Warwick)
• Associate Fellow Higher Education Academy (AFHEA)

Research

Overview

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.

Projects

• Response Study: a multidisciplinary NIHR-funded project investigating the implementation of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework in NHS.
• Teamwork in the COVID-19 Zone (with the University of Warwick): a project drawing on simulated medical emergencies to understand and improve communication amongst teams wearing FFPE Personal Protective Equipment.

Research group(s)

• Trials and Statistics
• Centre for Advanced Studies in Language and Communication

Publications

Selected publications

• Mesinioti, P. (2025). Multimodal discourse analysis in health communication: sketching out the field. Qualitative Health Communication, 4(1), 2–16. https://doi.org/10.7146/qhc.148808
• Mesinioti P, Angouri J. Reports from British Association for Applied Linguistics with Cambridge University Press seminars 2024: Multimodality in applied linguistic research: current trends and methodological implications. Language Teaching. Published online 2024:1-3. doi:10.1017/S0261444824000429

Full publications list

• Polina Mesinioti's Publications

Teaching

Postgraduate

• MPH Dissertation Supervisor
• Mentoring PhD students
• Supporting the postgraduate module 'Health Research in Practice' (HEA00092M), University of York (2023)

External activities

Memberships

• Member of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL)

Board Membership

• Member of the Open University Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) (2023-2025)

Editorial duties

• Regular reviewer for the Qualitative Health Communication (QHC) Journal