Sarah's main strand of research explores the ways in which people understand and reason about metaphors, with a particular focus on the factors that influence people’s perspectives on the movement of events in time. She is currently writing a monograph with Michele Feist for Cambridge University Press on time, metaphor, and language from a Cognitive Science perspective. Sarah is also involved in a number of projects exploring the pervasiveness of metaphor and embodied cognition in education and society.

Dr Sarah Duffy is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics in the Department of Humanities at Northumbria, where she has been based since 2016. Prior to this, she held a lectureship in the Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics at the University of Birmingham.

Since 2016, Sarah has served as Review Editor for the journal Language and Cognition and, in 2019, she launched the new Cambridge University Press Elements Series in Cognitive Linguistics with Co-Editor, Nick Riches.

In 2019, Sarah was elected as Vice President for the UK Cognitive Linguistics Association. She is also Visiting Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China.