FEATURED NEOLOGISM:

My favourite neologisms is “doomscrolling.” This English term describes the compulsive act of scrolling through bad news on social media or news websites, despite the negative impact it has on the reader’s mental health. The word combines “doom,” which evokes a sense of impending disaster, with “scrolling,” the action of moving through digital content. “Doomscrolling” gained prominence around 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when many people found themselves overwhelmed by a constant stream of distressing news. The term reflects a paradoxical behaviour where individuals seek out negative information, even though it often leaves them feeling more anxious or depressed. It has been recognised in various dictionaries and highlighted in discussions about mental health during the pandemic, capturing a behaviour that has become increasingly relevant in the digital age.

I hold a PhD in computational linguistics from the University of Pisa in 2010. Between 2011 and 2014 I worked as language technologist for Oxford dictionaries for 4 years, developing a system for the management of neologism suggestions by editors. Between 2017 and 2021 I was a research fellow at The Alan Turing Institute and the University of Cambridge and have been lecturer in digital humanities and cultural computation at King’s College London since 2021. My research focusses on computational methods for the study of semantic change in both historical languages and contemporary data. My profile is https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/barbara-mcgillivray and my list of publications is https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=71qKahgAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&authuser=1&sortby=pubdate.