Tammy Gales is a Professor of Linguistics and the Director of Research at the Institute for Forensic Linguistics, Threat Assessment, and Strategic Analysis at Hofstra University, New York. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis, where she received the Washington, DC Research Fellowship to pursue her dissertation work on threatening communications with the Academy Group, a behavioral analysis firm of retired FBI and Secret Service agents. She is currently the Vice President (President-elect) of the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics (IAFLL), co-editor of the Elements in Forensic Linguistics series from Cambridge University Press, and an editorial board member of the journals Applied Corpus Linguistics and Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito. 

Gales’ research interests cross the boundaries of forensic linguistics and language and the law. Within the first strand, she applies corpus and discourse analytic methods to the examination of authorial stance in threatening communications, cross-examinations of assault victims, confession statements, and parole board hearings in which certain populations are disproportionately denied parole. Within the second strand, she applies corpus linguistic methods to the investigation of disputed meanings in legal statutes and trademark cases. Gales has presented her research to legal, linguistic, and law enforcement audiences across five continents; has published widely in linguistics journals and law reviews; and is a co-author of the recently released book Speaking of Crime: The Language of Criminal Justice, 2nd edition. 

Gales frequently serves as a linguistic consultant on civil and criminal matters, and is a trained lexicographer, having worked in the UK for Addison Wesley Longman and Bloomsbury Publishing. Corpus-based dictionaries she collaborated on include Longman Advanced American English Dictionary, Longman Business English Dictionary, Longman American Idioms Dictionary, and Macmillan English Dictionary. Previous linguistic experiences also include teaching written literacy skills on the Navajo Nation, working as a managing editor at a Southwest publishing company, and teaching English as a foreign language in Greece.