Professor Elizabeth Stokoe

Professor Elizabeth Stokoe (from 2023, London School of Economics) maintained an active involvement in the IAS’ Fellowship programmes since their very beginning in 2017; her journey with us as a Loughborough host showcases inspiring collaboration stories that truly exemplify our goals as an Institute.  Former Professor of Social Interaction in the Discourse and Rhetoric Group in Loughborough’s School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Stokoe’s award-winning expertise in conversation analysis elicited a wide range of international research activities facilitated by the IAS, through which she spearheaded numerous collaborations that transgressed disciplinary and international barriers to elevate Loughborough’s research impact and led sustainable academic-industrial collaborations. With 10 international IAS Visiting Fellows as collaborators, Stokoe utilised the potential of the Institute to create long-lasting collaborations, multiple journal and book publications, and various events and networking. In Stokoe’s own words, “[The IAS] really accelerated some existing relationships and enabled new ones to be nurtured.”

Drawing upon particularly fruitful collaborations, Stokoe credits with the IAS with the inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary facilitation of a number of areas. Stokoe hosted Professor Pentti Haddington (Oulu University, Finland) in 2018 as part of an inter-disciplinary research project on communication in high stakes emergency settings. This group were able to stretch multi-disciplinarily angles across a highly topical agenda, setting up a long trajectory which resulted in a Special Issue in The Journal of Pragmatics (Haddington and Stokoe 2023) and Crisis Talk: Negotiating with Individuals in Crisis (Sikveland, Kevoe-Feldman and Stokoe, Routledge 2022). Furthermore, through hosting Dr Kevin Whitehead and Professor Geoffrey Raymond from University of California, Santa Barbara in 2022, a book on social categories in interaction was proposed and core content written for publication in 2024. Lastly, the IAS has been able to create opportunities for new connections, drawing Stokoe’s attention to the work of Cathy Pearl (Google) in 2022 on conversation design will culminate in a jointly authored book with Pearl and Dr Saul Albertson of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities and a series of masterclasses for the Conversation Design Institute. Stokoe’s multi-cited engagements with the IAS demonstrates not only the power of realising international and interdisciplinary potential of research but has enabled the bridging of a gap between industrial and academic expertise, with the potential for high impact change-making with cross-sector policy relevance.

In Stokoe’s own words, the IAS has been able to give the “gift of time and energy”, recognising the potential from various collaborators across academic disciplines. She has credited the “incredible atmosphere inside International House” as something particularly special, as well as the support for visitors and academic hosts; “What the IAS has done is make it incredibly easy for visitors to come to Loughborough and is taking proper care of them as VIP's.”. Stokoe’s story typifies the desired outcomes of the IAS; fostering true collaboration across nations and disciplines to realise the potential of globally empowering research.