Curriculum Vitæ
- View my formal Curriculum Vitæ in PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader).
Education
I was born in July 1981 in Plymouth and live in Yelverton, West Devon. I was educated at Meavy CofE Primary School on Dartmoor and then at Devonport High School for Boys in Plymouth.
Whilst at school, I obtained 11 GCSEs at grades A-C and 4 A-Levels, all at grade A, in French, German, History and General Studies.
In October 2000 I matriculated at Girton College, Cambridge University, where I read for a BA (Hons.) in French and Spanish, specialising in semantics and historical linguistics. As part of this course, I worked in Pau (South-West France) as an English-language teaching assistant from September 2002 - April 2003. I graduated in June 2004 with a class 2.1 degree, including a first class mark for my dissertation on Aranés, and was awarded the Cambridge MA in March 2007.
In September 2004, I moved to the University of Birmingham to read for an MPhil in Corpus Linguistics, with my thesis topic a diachronic corpus-driven analysis of the word 'work' in nineteenth-century English. The MPhil was awarded in July 2006.
In October 2005, I started a PhD at Birmingham in the Hispanic Studies Department as the Sir Henry Thomas scholar, investigating the language of President Hugo Chávez in Venezeula, using techniques from corpus linguistics.
Work experience & Employment
During my time at school, I also did work experience placements at (the now defunct) Brymon Airways in Plymouth and at the British Telecom Satellite Earth Station at Goonhilly in Cornwall.
On leaving school in July 1999, I took a gap-year and, in addition to some time working in a local supermarket, I went to Seville in Spain for two months on a language course at CLIC. For five months that summer, I also worked as a children's entertainer at La Petite Camargue campsite in the south of France. I also used part of my gap-year to help for a week at my old primary school and I also helped in the Modern Languages department at Coombe Dean School in Plymouth, designing a new page for their Intranet.
In July and August 2002, I also spent six weeks working in the marketing department of the major telecoms research company Analysys and in July and August 2003 I worked as a receptionist at Camping La Paillotte, where I used to go on holiday.
During the summer of 2004, I worked in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages in Cambridge University as a research assistant, investigating methods of producing random-access digital video for language-learning.
Whilst at Birmingham University, I have been teaching various Spanish Language courses as part of my scholarship.
Interests
It was while I was still at school that my interest in Amateur Radio started. I took the City and Guilds Radio Amateur's Examination in December 1995 to get my first licence and callsign (G7WJF) and then upgraded to my current callsign (M0BLF) after passing the Radio Society of Great Britain's 12 words/minute Morse Code test. I am now regularly to be heard on the HF bands and am a former Chairman of the Cambridge University Wireless Society.
I was also honoured to be awarded the G5RP trophy for progress in HF DXing by the RSGB in October 2001 and to be made an instructor for the Amateur Radio Foundation Licence in February 2002.
Another interest of mine is music. I have a pass in Grade VI 'cello and a merit in Grade VI piano. At school, I sang in the 'Friday Choir' and went with them on many tours to France, Holland and Ireland, as well as recording with them for the radio station Classic FM. I also enjoy cycling (something you do a lot of if you live in Cambridge!) and walking on Dartmoor when I am home.
As might also have been gathered, I am very keen on website designing, with particular interest in accessibility and standardisation issues. I have taught myself XHTML, PHP and SMIL, and Perl amongst other technologies.
I am also a member of, and part-time activist for, the Liberal Democrat political party in the UK.