Fransina Stradling (formerly Fransina De Jager) is a PhD researcher in Cognitive Stylistics at the University of Huddersfield, interested in exploring reader empathy with characters through the lens of Cognitive Grammar and related Cognitive Linguistic frameworks that allow the analysis of reader positioning in storyworlds. Her PhD research is funded by the University of Huddersfield. Fransina is also interested in corpus stylistics and has headed the compiling of the HUM19UK corpus, a 13M-word corpus of 19th century British fiction.

Fransina completed her undergraduate degree Magna Cum Laude at University College Roosevelt (Netherlands) in 2016, majoring in Linguistics, Literature and Art History. She went on to complete a MA in English Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Huddersfield (UK), for which she gained a distinction and the Chancellor’s Prize for the highest cumulative grade in 2017. In 2020 she won the Palgrave Prize for best written version of a student paper at the PALA 2019 conference with her paper on empathetic engagement with the mind of the protagonist in “The Story of an Hour”.

Alongside her PhD, she has been a research assistant for the Hansard at Huddersfield project since March 2018 and Contributor Liaison for the PGR-run Languages, Texts and Society journal since October 2021. Fransina coordinated the Linguistics at Huddersfield Research Seminar Series between January 2019 and December 2020 and is currently a co-host (with Lynn Eekhof) of the Empathy and Narrative Discussion sessions, which are interdisciplinary discussion events about research into empathy and reading.