Concept Analytics aims to understand human thinking by analysing conceptual layering in texts. We develop and apply innovative tools and techniques that combine both the distant reading of texts and corpus linguistic techniques to objectively identify suitable targets for analysis and subsequently analyse them. Our ideas embrace Digital Humanities thinking in that big data exploration works best when there is dialogue between different views and layers of data.

The things we write about and the words we use to do so hold the key to our conceptualisation of the world and everything in it. We attach primary importance to concepts as units of knowledge cognitively categorised on the basis of their importance in every-day life. We consider concepts embedded in language as units that provide a window into the human mind and thinking processes. The Concept Analytics Lab seeks to develop tools and apply corpus and socio-linguistic analysis techniques to reveal and visualise these very concepts.