Research interests
Professor Stephen Hester's research expertise is in ethnomethodology
and conversation analysis, and especially in membership categorization
analysis. His previously published research includes studies of: mundane
reason, description and motivational accounts in referral talk involving
teachers and educational psychologists; the categorical organization
of mass media stories about the Montreal Massacre (with Peter Eglin);
'reality analysis' in classroom talk and story-telling; and the use
of national identity categories in television news reports. His current
research consists of a study of sequential and categorical orders in
the organization of descriptions of 'deviance' in referral talk.