Dr W.J.P. Stommel (Wyke)

Wyke’s main line of research is the analysis of the ways in which participants interact in institutional contexts, such as the police, medical and counseling settings. Her analyses, grounded in conversation analysis, focus on actions (e.g., requesting or giving advice, formulating, displaying empathy), on how these actions are designed and developed, and how institutional norms, identities and relationships are displayed, oriented to and contructed through them. One strand of her research deals with the specific question how online/ digital institutional interaction is organized in comparison to spoken alternatives. She has examined chat and e-mail counseling, telephone counseling, police interviews with adults and with children, medical consultations and online forum interaction. Wyke has co-initiated the Microanalysis Of Online Data (MOOD) network and is currently the chair of the Anéla Working Group Interaction Analysis (AWIA).
Another aspect of Wyke’s research is her engagement in feeding back her research to professionals by “translating” research findings into recommendations and involving practitioners in reflecting on their own talk from a conversation analytic perspective.