My Research

I strive to conduct interdisciplinary, cutting-edge, and impactful research in sociolinguistics. As such, I apply qualitative and quantitative tools (e.g., critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, ethnography) on different fronts:

Language & Mental Health

While I am broadly interested in how mental health is discursively constructed across different contexts, my expertise lies in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). My PhD thesis particularly focused on sexuality and gender-related obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) – e.g., Homosexual OCD (HOCD), Sexual Orientation OCD (SO-OCD), Pedophilia OCD (POCD), Transgender OCD (TOCD), Gender Identity (GI-OCD) – and how affected people orient in their discourse towards normative ideas of selfhood, gender, sexuality and mental health. I am also interested in exploring the ideologies that shape and are reflected in the OCD symptoms.

I also founded the conference/platform OCD in Society which was launched in 2019, and organized its 2021 and 2024 editions as well. The goal of the conference is to gather artists and scholars working on OCD from qualitative and arts-based perspectives to think about how OCD is constituted through culture, society and meaning.

Language, power & ideology

I am also interested in understanding the different ways language and ideology get intertwined in discourse for social and political goals. For instance, I have explored the role of metonymy in anti-genderist discourse when framing feminist and LGBT+ groups as a dangerous Other.

Alternative Assessment & Grading Methods

I'm also interested in exploring alternative methods to assess and grade students' work. I'm particularly interested in stepping away from point-based grading systems and move towards criteria-based grading which Prof. Raphaël Pasquini (2021) calls "constructive grading".

Peer-reviewed publications

• Simonetti, N., and Coimbra-Gomes, E. (in preparation, 2027). Critical OCD Studies: Approaching obsessions and compulsions across disciplines. Disability Studies Quarterly. ​
  
  
• Coimbra-Gomes, E., and Paul, N. (in review, 2027). Governing the embodied boundaries of self and space through the logics of purity: A sociocultural framework of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Disability Studies Quarterly. ​
  
  
• Cariola, L., and Coimbra-Gomes, E. (forthcoming, 2027). Editorial introduction. In L. Cariola & E. Coimbra-Gomes (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language, Discourse and Mental Health. Routledge. ​
  
  
• Coimbra-Gomes, E. (forthcoming, 2027). The language of obsessive-compulsive disorder: a review of linguistic approaches. In L. Cariola and E. Coimbra-Gomes (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language, Discourse and Mental Health. Routledge. ​
  
  
• Coimbra-Gomes, E. (2025). The task-specific assessment checklist: “constructive grading” when assessing language production tasks. ETAS Journal, 42(1), 60. ​
  
  
• Katsiveli, S., and, Coimbra-Gomes, E. (2020). Discursive constructions of the enemy through metonymy: the case of CitizenGo's anti-genderist e-petitions. Anglistica AION 24(1), 9–23.
  
  
• Coimbra-Gomes, E. (2020). Ego-dystonic stance-taking in sexual orientation obsessive-compulsive disorder (SO-OCD). Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders 27. ​
  
  
• Coimbra-Gomes, E. and Motschenbacher, H. (2019). Language, normativity and sexual orientation obsessive-compulsive disorder (SO-OCD): A corpus-assisted discourse analysis. Language in Society 48(4): 565–584.

Edited Books & Special Issues

•  Simonetti, N., and Coimbra-Gomes, E. (in preparation, 2027). Critical OCD Studies: Approaching obsessions and compulsions across disciplines. Disability Studies Quarterly. ​
  
  
• Cariola, L., and Coimbra-Gomes, E. (forthcoming, 2027). The Routledge Handbook of Language, Discourse and Mental Health. Routledge.

PhD Thesis

• Coimbra-Gomes, E. (2021). Language and Normativity in Sexuality and Gender-Related Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: a Netnographic-Informed Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Queen Mary University of London.

MA Theses

Media Outreach Publications

• Coimbra-Gomes, E. (2019). A linguist asks: "What can obsessive-compulsive disorder tell us about society's perception of gender, sexuality, and love?". Equilibrium Magazine 67, 28–31.
  
  
• Gomes, E.C. (2017). Exploring normative regulations of sexual intrusive thoughts via (virtual) ethnographic approaches and corpus-assisted discourse analysis. IGALA Blog, 20th November. ​
  
  
• Gomes, E. (2015). #OCDletmego: Ein Musikprojekt zu Zwangsstörungen. Newsletter Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Zwangsstörungen 2, 8–9.