Elizabeth Stokoe HonFBPsS CPsychol was Professor of Social Interaction in the Discourse and Rhetoric Group (DARG) at Loughborough University between 2002-2023, where she was Associate Dean for Research (2013-2018) in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities and then Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor for REF2021. She joined The London School of Economics and Political Science Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science in January 2023 and has been Associate Vice President (Impact) at since January 2024. She retains close collaborations with colleagues in DARG, and in the Research and Innovation team, as well as in the Department for Mathematics Education, and is currently a CoI at the ESRC Centre on Early Mathematics Learning led by Professor Camilla Gilmore at Loughborough.
Elizabeth is passionate about translating her research in conversation analysis for wider audiences and she has presented and discussed her research at many science festivals and events including at Microsoft, Google, TED, Latitude Festival, and The Royal Institution, and featured on BBC Radio 4’s "The Life Scientific" and "Word of Mouth." Her book, Talk: The Science of Conversation, was published in 2018 (Little, Brown). Since 2008, she has worked extensively with external partners across public, third, and private sectors, and been a industry fellow at Typeform and Deployed. She developed ‘CARM’, a research-based training tool, which was awarded a Wired Innovation Fellowship. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she participated in the Policing and Security subgroup of the Independent Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours (SPI-B), which provided independent, expert behavioural science advice to the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). She is also a member of Independent SAGE’s behaviour group. She was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the British Psycholgical Society in 2021 and named on the Conversation Design Institute’s CDI Foundation Conversational AI Leaders List 2025.
Elizabeth’s research is in conversation analysis, focused on understanding how social interaction works in settings from first dates to medicine and healthcare; from mediation to police crisis negotiation and emergency service calls, and from sales encounters to interaction in "SaaS" (Software as a Service) platforms and conversational user interfaces. The common thread in her work is the identification of effective and less effective interactional practices and their impact on the outcome of conversational encounters. She has published over 160 research outputs, including several co-authored books (Discourse and Identity, 2006, Conversation and Gender, 2011, Discursive Psychology: Classic and Contemporary Issues, 2016; Crisis Talk: Negotiating with Individuals in Crisis, 2022). Her new co-authored book is Categories in Social Interaction (Routledge, 2025) co-authored with Dr Kevin Whitehead and Prof Geoff Raymond (both UCSB).
- Whitehead, K.., Stokoe, E., Raymond, G. (2025). Social categories in interaction: Conversation analysis and membership categorization. Routledge.
- Stokoe, E., Albert, S., Buschmeier, H., & Stommel, W. (2024) Conversation analysis and conversational technologies: Finding the common ground between academia and industry. Discourse and Communication 18 (6). DOI: 10.1177/17504813241267118
- Stokoe, E., Albert, S., & Pearl, C. (in press). What is “conversational” about conversational technologies, products, and services? Insights from conversation analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics.
- Stokoe, E., Antaki, C., Chrisostomou, L., Henderson, E., & Stewart, S. (in press). The softness of hard data: Discursive psychology, conversation analysis, and psychological science. Qualitative Psychology.
- Inglis, M., Foster, C., Lortie-Forgues, H., Simms, V., & Stokoe, E. (2025). Psychology and research assessment in the United Kingdom. Cogent Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2025.2570100.
- Albury, C., McCabe, R., Patel, D., & Stokoe, E. (2025). Identifying, communicating, and de-escalating risk in high-stakes settings: How conversation analysis research can underpin communication training. Patient Education and Counseling. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2025.109281
- Stokoe, E., Whitehead., K., & Raymond, G. (2025). Categories in social interaction: Unlocking the resources of conversation analysis and membership categorization for psychological science: Annual Review of Psychology, 76, 531-557. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020124-023147
- Albert, S., Housley, W., Sikveland, R.O., & Stokoe, E. (2025). The Conversational Action Test: detecting the artificial sociality of AI. New Media & Society.