Saul is a lecturer in social science (social psychology) in Communication and Media at Loughborough University.
His research explores the technology of social interaction at two ends of the spectrum of formalization. At one end, his work on conversational AI asks which features and mechanisms of human social action can be represented and modeled computationally. At the other, he studies how people make aesthetic judgements and interact while dealing with underdetermined cultural objects and situations. This program spans multiple, often incompatible disciplines, so his work builds methodological interfaces between them.
His postdoc (2017-2019) between the psychology and computer science departments at the Human Interaction Lab at Tufts University involved exploring the methodological fusion of conversation analysis and experimental psychology, building software tools and protocols for generating large scale interactional data, and developing open-science methods for improving interaction research in psychology.
His PhD (2017) in the Cognitive Science Research Group in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London explored how people do aesthetic evaluations in interaction, funded by a grant from the EPSRC's Media and Arts Technology Doctoral Training Centre.
His background is in the arts, where I worked in participatory culture, science, and technology, co-founding The People Speak Network in 2006 to host open-ended conversations in public spaces.
Saul's research explores the technology of social interaction at two ends of the spectrum of formalization. At one end, his work on conversational AI asks which features and mechanisms of human social action can be represented and modeled computationally. At the other, he studies how people make aesthetic judgements and interact while dealing with underdetermined cultural objects and situations. This program spans multiple, often incompatible disciplines, so his work builds methodological interfaces between them.
Conversational AI
Three key questions in conversational AI: what can AI systems and their designers learn from naturalistic social interaction; what can we learn about social interaction using AI systems as research tools; and what can we learn by studying how people work together and collaborate with AI systems in everyday and applied settings such as health and social care? An overview of this research is presented in Three Meeting Points between CA and AI – a keynote for the 2020 European Conference on Conversation Analysis
Aesthetics in Interaction
Judgements of taste are often too underdetermined and open ended for the standardized scales and metrics typical in psychology and market research. We can look to situations in which people must work together, in situ, to establish the relevant criteria for an evaluation, and to figure out who knows (or can claim to know) about whatever is being judged. This research program is outlined in Art as Occasion, a talk at the CAA 2017, and its implications for the creative industries are discussed in Measuring Aesthetic Value for Arts Professional.
Methodological Interfaces
Multidisciplinary research is essential for understanding the complexity of social action, but often involves incompatible assumptions, data types, and research designs. His research brings together teams with different specialisms and theoretical commitments to create new techniques, tools, and interfaces between methodological boundaries. This involves convening cross-disciplinary research networks to develop new software tools, data corpora, research training resources, and critical methodological literature.
Saul teaches undergraduate courses and supervises MSc dissertations in the School of Social Science and Humanities and BSc dissertations for students on Loughborough Psychology courses in the School of Sports, Exercise and Health sciences.
Current Undergraduate Courses
- Principles of Social Research Methods: a mandatory course introducing all first-year students to fundamentals of research methodology in the social sciences.
- Media Landscapes: introducing first-year students to critical and professional perspectives on film, entertainment, news media, games, and the creative industries.
- Social Interaction (syllabus) (2019-2020): an advanced level course introducing students to the practicalities and methodological basis for studying human social interaction.
Current Graduate Courses
- Applied Conversation Analysis: a graduate-level intensive course preparing MSc students to use of conversation analysis for their own practical, applied research projects.
Workshops
International workshops with the Discourse and Rhetoric Group
Saul currently co-supervises five PhD students and welcomes inquiries about PhD and undergraduate supervision that relate to his research interests.
Receptionist-led telephone triage in GP Practices: communication barriers to patient access?
Prof. Elizabeth Stokoe & Prof. Alison Pilnick
Managing Selfhood in Dementia: Interrogating the operationalisation of identity work and its relationship with media representations.
Prof. Elizabeth Peel & Prof. Alison Pilnick
Yuanyuan Zhang
Respecifying ‘culture’ in mediation encounters
Prof. Elizabeth Stokoe & Dr. Jessica Robles
Interactional Management of Agency in Homecare Work with Virtual Assistants
Prof. Charles Antaki & Prof. Elizabeth Peel
Dávid Gráf
Taste and National Identity in Social Practices of Art Evaluation
Dr. Adrian Leguina
- Albert, S., Hamann, M (2021). Putting wake words to bed: We speak wake words with systematically varied prosody, but CUIs don’t listen. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI ’21), July 27–29, 2021, Bilbao (online), Spain. ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3469595.3469608
- Stokoe, E., Sikveland, R. O., Albert, S., Hamann, M., & Housley, W. (2020). Can humans simulate talking like other humans? Comparing simulated clients to real customers in service inquiries. Discourse Studies, 22(1), 87–109. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445619887537
- Albert, S., Housley, W., & Stokoe, E. (2019). In Case of Emergency, Order Pizza: An Urgent Case of Action Formation and Recognition. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces, 15:1–15:2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3342775.3342800
- Albert, S., & Raymond, C. W. (2019). Conversation analysis at the ‘middle region’ of public life: Greetings and the interactional construction of Donald Trump’s political persona. Language & Communication, 69, 67–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2019.08.001
- Housley, W., Albert, S., & Stokoe, E. (2019). Natural Action Processing: Conversation Analysis and Big Interactional Data. Proceedings of Halfway to the Future (HTTF 2019), November 19-20, 2019, Nottingham, United Kingdom. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3363384.3363478
- Albert, S., Heath, C., Skach, S., Harris, M. T., Miller, M., Healey, P. G. T. (2019). Drawing as transcription: how do graphical techniques inform interaction analysis? Social Interaction Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 2(1), DOI: 10.7146/si.v2i1.113115
- Albert, S., & de Ruiter, J. P. (2018). Improving Human Interaction Research through Ecological Grounding. Collabra:Psychology, 4(1), 24. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.132
- Albert, S., & de Ruiter, J. P. (2018). Repair: The Interface Between Interaction and Cognition. Topics in Cognitive Science, 10(2), 279–313. doi:10.1111/tops.12339
- Albert, S., Albury, C., Alexander, M., Harris, M. T., Hofstetter, E., Holmes, E. J. B., & Stokoe, E. (2018). The conversational rollercoaster: Conversation analysis and the public science of talk. Discourse Studies, 20(3), 397–424. doi:10.1177/1461445618754571
- De Ruiter, J. P., & Albert, S. (2017), An appeal for a methodological fusion between conversation analysis and experimental psychology. Research on Language and Social Interaction. 50(1), 90-107. doi:10.1080/08351813.2017.1262050
- Albert, S. (2015) Rhythmical coordination of performers and audience in partner dance: delineating improvised and choreographed interaction. Etnografia e Ricerca Qualitativa 3/2015, 399-428. doi: 10.3240/81723