Department of Modern English Language and Linguistics
Dr Bella Marley is an internationally recognised researcher in interspecies communication, with particular interests in multimodality, translanguaging and the therapeutic potential of human–animal interaction. Her database of birdsong: Transnational Wildlife Exchange and Ethological Tracking of Interspecies Expression (TWEETIE) has been widely reported in the Gilliland Gazette.
Her pioneering work has challenged conventional understandings of linguistic competence by exploring how meaning is negotiated across species boundaries. Her current research focuses on feline communication, drawing on longitudinal observational data from two domestic cats, Sooky and Honey.
Teaching
MELL308 Animal Communication
MELL309 Baby Talk
Publications
Bella also works with Sooky and Honey as research collaborators. Their author order reflects their respective contributions to the research, rather than any assumption of human precedence.
- Marley, B., Honey and Sooky (2026) Silence is not absence: Feline non-participation as resistance to anthropocentric conversational norms. Critical Animal Communication Studies 8(1): 23–47.
- Marley, B. (2026) Finding my voice, finding our ground: A reflexive autoethnography of feminist folk performance in a neoliberal university. Journal of Creative Academic Practice 19(3): 201–226.
- Marley, B., Sooky and Honey (2025) Beyond the human turn: Negotiating epistemic authority in multispecies domestic encounters. Journal of Interspecies Discourse 12(2): 114–139.
- Pritchard, E. and Marley, B. (2023) Negotiating interspecies meaning: A multimodal analysis of communicative encounters between domestic cats and dogs. International Journal of Animal Linguistics 20(2): 115–139.
- Marley, B. (2022) Translanguaging and cats: a case study of Sooky and Honey. Journal of Holistic Animal Communication 3(1): 1-6.
- Fontaine, L., Marley, B., and Gibbons, R. (2020) Dancing with horses: Towards a kinaesthetic framework for human–equine communication. Journal of Holistic Animal Communication 1(2): 44–67.
- Marley, B. (2019) The role of cats as instructional and diagnostic partners in social-emotional learning and human health monitoring. International Journal of Animal Linguistics 16(2): 110-119.
- Singh, A., Wilcox, J. and Marley, B. (2018) Building the Birdsong Database: A multimodal corpus of avian vocalisation and communicative intent. Animal Language and Symbolism 7(1): 23–51.
- Marley, B. (2017) Use of Multimodal multimedia to facilitate human-chimpanzee communication. International Journal of Animal Linguistics 14(3): 212-244.
- Marley, B. (2015) Beyond sign language: on using email to interact with chimpanzees. Animal Language and Symbolism 4(2): 90-113.
- Marley, B. (2014) Towards a holistic theory of chimp language: signs, symbols, meaning, Balboa Working Papers in Linguistics 5. Balboa Press: USA.
Bella and the Common Ground
Bella is the founder, principal songwriter and guitarist of Bella and the Common Ground, an acoustic folk collective exploring ecological grief, multispecies solidarity and feminist self-expression. She performs alongside two postgraduate researchers, whose contributions have helped the group develop a more experimental sound. The group regards musical performance as an extension of its commitment to social and environmental change.
The following recordings are shared with the kind permission of the group. You can listen here or download each track.
1. Returning to the Earth
Bella writes: “Although this song sounds as if it is about death, it is actually about the importance of communing with nature, and getting back to our roots, so to speak.”
2. Destroying Our World
Bella writes: “I wrote this song after seeing an article on the news about single use plastic bags. It’s something I feel super-strongly about, and I hope that everyone who hears this song thinks twice about using any form of single use plastic, and that includes polystyrene. Sophie and I were experimenting with a newer, kind of punky sound when we did this, and the anger you can hear in our voices is real.”
3. The Last Polar Bear
Bella writes: “I think this song is perhaps the most challenging of all. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be the last polar bear on the planet, after humanity has killed them all through its greed. And I thought about the message it would try to give to all of us.”
4. Crazy Cat Lady
Bella writes: “There’s something very powerful about women who live alone with cats. In the past, they were viewed as witches, and I do believe that we have special powers, the ability to make insights into the unknown. This song is basically a call to arms for all the Crazy Cat Ladies out there.”
5. Gilliland Girl
Bella writes: “When I was growing up I loved to listen to songs that had a bittersweet story to them, like Ode to Billy Joe, Angie Baby, Fancy and Summer (The First Time). This is a song I wrote when I was walking home one day past a group of girls who were smoking and got to thinking about parental neglect, age-gap relationships and easy access to opioids. So trigger warning!”