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A list of all the posts and pages found on the site. For you robots out there, there is an XML version available for digesting as well.
Pages
Posts
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Blog Post number 4
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Blog Post number 2
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Blog Post number 1
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portfolio
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publications
Is there an uncanny valley for speech? Investigating listeners’ evaluations of realistic TTS voices.
Published in Speech Prosody, 2024
In this paper, we aim to describe the relationship between synthesised voices' perceived human-likeness and pleasantness and seek evidence of auditory uncanny valley effects (UVE) in listeners' evaluations.
Recommended citation: Alice Ross, Martin Corley and Catherine Lai. (2024). 'Is there an uncanny valley for speech? Investigating listeners' evaluations of realistic TTS voices.' Speech Prosody 2024, 1115-1119.
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Beyond the binary: Limitations and possibilities of gender-related speech technology research.
Published in IEEE SLT, 2024
This paper presents a review of 107 research papers relating to speech and sex or gender in ISCA Interspeech publications between 2013 and 2023. We note the scarcity of work on this topic and find that terminology, particularly the word gender, is used in ways that are underspecified and often out of step with the prevailing view in social sciences that gender is socially constructed and is a spectrum as opposed to a binary category.
Recommended citation: Ariadna Sanchez, Alice Ross, and Nina Markl (2024). 'Beyond the binary: Limitations and possibilities of gender-related speech technology research.' IEEE Spoken Language Technology Workshop 2024, 526-532.
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Conveying gender through speech: insights from trans men.
Published in Interspeech, 2025
Focusing on the understudied population of trans men, we present one of the first studies on style shift in trans speakers, considering the phonetic features of trans men's speech in different contexts, and their own beliefs about vocal cues to gender perception.
Recommended citation: Alice Ross, Cliodhna Hughes, Eddie L. Ungless and Catherine Lai. (2025). 'Conveying gender through speech: insights from trans men.' Interspeech 2025, 674-678.
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The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-To-Speech.
Published in ACM CHI, 2026
Drawing upon sociolinguistic theory, we carry out a novel experiment to investigate implicit ideological associations in a leading commercial TTS system, concluding that the system’s output disproportionately reproduces white, male, US-accented speech when prompted to convey competence.
Recommended citation: Alice Ross, Nina Markl, Catherine Lai, and Lauren Hall-Lew, (accepted). The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-To-Speech. CHI EA 26: Extended Abstracts of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Barcelona.
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talks
Beyond the binary: Limitations and possibilities of gender-related speech technology research
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With Ariadna Sanchez
Conveying gender through speech: insights from trans men
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With Cliodhna Hughes
Identity and ideology in commercial TTS
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Gender and the Machine: Trans Tech, Emotion and AI
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Chaired discussion with Dr. Nazanin Andalibi and Dr. Oliver Haimson on the realities of doing gender, emotion and AI work
Jewish perspectives on AI
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The Sound of Silencing: Identities and Ideologies in Commercial Text-To-Speech
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Invited guest lecture for ‘AI in the Creative Industries’ module
teaching
Tutor, Professional Issues
Undergraduate course, Department of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 2025
Tutor and marker for Professional Issues, an ethics course for third-year Informatics undergraduates, Sept-Dec 2025.
Marker, Sociolinguistics
Honours course, Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh, 2025
Marker for an introductory course in Sociolinguistics, LEL, Sept-Dec 2025.
TA, Researching Responsible and Trustworthy Natural Language Processing
Postgraduate course, Department of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 2025
Teaching assistant for Researching Responsible and Trustworthy Natural Language Processing, a training course for students in the UKRI CDT for Designing Responsible NLP, Sept 2025 - August 2026.
Tutor, Language Variation and Change
Honours course, Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh, 2026
Tutor and marker for Language Variation and Change, LEL, Jan-April 2026.