Back in York again this week with the team at the Forensic Voice Centre, the second of my visits during my internship. This week I'm helping prepare for the mock court session for the current MSc Forensic Speech Science students at the University of York, as well as an online careers talk!

Whoa. Praat can automatically transcribe audio using Whisper now. www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/manual...

Paper accepted for #Interspeech2026 in Sydney this autumnǃǃ SO excited to be going to Australia, and maybe a stop-off back where I grew up in Malaysia tooǃ

Can accents change without in-person contact? My new chapter with Dr Ella Jeffries shows they can! We tracked first-year university students during Covid when learning and social activities were all online. If they had regular contact with new people, change was possible. brill.com/edcollchap-o...

exciting personal news!!!!!

Another interesting Guardian article which includes some helpful debunking of the myth that there are reliable vocal cues to deceitful speech - although interesting that it's easier to tell lies from truth when we only hear a voice, as opposed to when we also see the speaker.

Our study on accent bias in forensic contexts is cited in this interesting article by the guardian!

theconversation.com/amanda-seyfr... A really good piece here from Danielle Turton on recreation of historical accents and why the choices of accents and features matter, especially when they're 'regional' rather than RP.

An exciting opportunity to work with my amazing colleague Dr Kerri-Ann Butcher on an unprecedented sociolinguistics project revisiting Peter Trudgill's seminal dialectology work in Norwich! Please share with those in the language variation and change space 😊 jobs.leeds.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx...

We talk to @nataliebraber.bsky.social and @alicepaver.bsky.social in this episode: spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/BofOPMcxF0b

Our latest update to the very well-received @engmediacentre.bsky.social New Directions pack is now available! Written by Amanda Cole of University of Cambridge & me, it features 5 new summaries and Q&As, along with an updated glossary. Download it here: www.englishandmedia.co.uk/publications...

Use your voice to tell parliament to ban discrimination against the poor and class discrimination. Sign, share widely on your social media accounts with family and friends so you can help end prejudice against the poor. Also send to your mp and councillors petition.parliament.uk/petitions/75...

my cousin and his lovely partner of 16 years (yes they’re only 30) got married this weekend!!! 🥰🥹👰🏼‍♀️

anyone else remember the iTunes visualiser?? I used to LOVE putting this on to some Tchaikovsky ballet music. it was so mesmerising.

popping back on here to moan about academic payroll. still haven't been paid for 2 days of exam invigilating I did at the beginning of October!!!!!!!! give me my money please x

I'm going to finish this manuscript by the end of the week, I told myself

This is not a bread account, but I successfully replicated (and improved on!) my last sourdough loaf with this gorgeous open crumb. Looks like pushing the bulk ferment really works!!

after my starter dying, after months of trying so many techniques in our crappy oven to try and get a sexy ear on my sourdough loaf, of course it happened by accident as I left the dough out too long at the bulk fermentation stage. Probably won’t be able to replicate but hey ho!!!!

Just presented my poster at UKIS in York. It’s part of my PhD research looking at the perceptual effect of telephone quality recordings on the relationship between voice quality and voice similarity. You can download it here if you’re interested! bit.ly/paverukis Thanks all for the chats

preparing my poster for the UKIS conference next week. excited to be back up in York again!

plants: repotted. deer: spotted. data: collected. abstract: written. Good week!!

data collection on my next experiment is live!!! this bit is always so exciting. while I'm waiting I should start writing but instead this bank holiday weekend I shall be baking and repotting some plants 🥰

experimenting with lower hydration after trouble getting my loaves to keep their shape. paid off!!

Wrote this about some recent research into accents and dialects. Ties in to some interviews we've been doing over on the @lexispodcast.bsky.social

My @growsocialcapital.bsky.social is a partner in the Modern Cockney Festival and this is happening next week with @alicepaver.bsky.social of @cambridgeuni.bsky.social & Chris Strelluf of @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social 📆 18 March 🕰️ 1pm 🎟️https://www.tickettailor.com/events/growsocialcapitalcic/1601583

Episode 69 is out and it features @nataliebraber.bsky.social & @alicepaver.bsky.social talking about accent stereotypes and their recent paper on accent attitudes in forensic contexts. #Linguistics creators.spotify.com/pod/show/lex...

back in York for the weekend! I gave a talk on the second experiment of my PhD yesterday to the Forensic Speech Science research group at University of York, in the forensics lab where I spent many hours doing my MSc. Lovely to be back, even if it's grey and rainy today!

I was on @BBCRadio4 PM show yesterday evening talking about two of my favourite topics: accent prejudice and The Traitors!! Listen here from around 51 mins: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Just saw someone spell ‘bane’ (as in bane of my life) as ‘beign’!! Amazing stuff

Another feature of our research on accent bias in forensic contexts, this time in a piece on broader accent discrimination. Great to see the press talking about this really important issue, raising awareness of damaging stereotypes and harmful prejudice based on accents!

Great piece on UK (mostly English) accent discrimination here featuring lots of our favourite linguists. If you're looking for an accessible overview for A level, here it is. BBC News - UK's hierarchy of accents: 'I thought mine made me sound stupid' www.bbc.com/news/article...

Good to see this issue (and our Sutton Trust report) making its way into headlines again. The ABB project found that the most effective intervention in addressing accent bias was raising awareness of the issue. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Our paper on accent bias in forensic contexts is out: frontiersin.org/journals/com... It’s the first in a series of studies from the IVIP project bit.ly/ivipproject with @wrightdw.bsky.social, @nataliebraber.bsky.social & @nikolaspautz.bsky.social looking at what makes voices sound more guilty.

I agreed to do this in part because I'd get a chance to underline that if we judge people for their accents, we're stereotyping them... #linguistics The Traitors: how trustworthy is a Welsh accent? A sociolinguist explains theconversation.com/the-traitors...

at the risk of sounding like such a middle class loser, it is kind of appalling that @bbciplayer.bsky.social on Apple TV doesn’t have subtitles. Claims that it is to do with the video format don’t make sense when every other streaming service manages to do it. Accessibility is key.

This is in The Guardian today. www.theguardian.com/science/2024...